Seventy-Four More Hours Later
by TomFoolery
Summary: Nyota and Spock are less than a month away from becoming parents and decide to take a last minute trip to Risa for what Dr. McCoy calls a "babymoon." What they get instead is a fight for survival in a dark swamp, and they quickly suspect they may not be alone. Not again.
1. The Vacation

**Author's Note:** So, it turns out I'm a sadist who prefers action/adventure to romance and wanted a little more of it in my life. Since this story's predecessor was told from Nyota's point of view, I thought it would be interesting to have a go at it from Spock's mind this time around. Though it builds on many of my other stories, it can certainly be read as a standalone work. So here it is, a proper sequel to _Seventy-Four Hours Later_ , featuring… Even. More. _Tropes_.

* * *

"Enjoy your vacation. Have fun," Dr. McCoy said. "Doctor's orders."

"I do not believe amusement can be made mandatory," Spock replied.

Nyota rolled her eyes and stooped to pick up her duffel bag, but Spock intercepted her efforts. His own bag hung from his right shoulder, and he repositioned it to more easily carry hers.

"I'm pregnant, not handicapped. I think I can manage a few kilograms," she sighed.

"I know you are capable," he replied. "But I am available to assist you."

Nyota stepped onto the transporter pad without further comment, but the tension she left in her wake spoke volumes. Spock exchanged a glance with Dr. McCoy and joined her.

The door to transporter room one rushed open and Captain Kirk entered, sporting a characteristic grin.

"You were going to leave without saying goodbye?"

"I said goodbye this morning at breakfast," Spock explained.

"And I've seen you every day for the last four years," Nyota added, making no attempt to shield the irritation in her voice. " _Captain_."

"You look lovely as ever, Lieutenant."

Spock concurred with his captain's judgment, but he knew from numerous prior conversations with Nyota that she did not share their opinion. She was self-conscious about her weight, her blotchy skin, and the red marks spreading around the girth of her midsection. Despite his protests, she remained unconvinced the natural consequences of pregnancy had done little to diminish her beauty.

"I'm sorry I'm cranky," she sighed, offering their captain a weak smile. "And I will miss you and everyone on _Enterprise_. I'm just done with being pregnant. My feet hurt, I can hardly breathe, I haven't slept well in months, and I feel like a water balloon."

"Well, that's pregnancy for you," Dr. McCoy mused, looking down at the transporter computer.

"Have _you_ ever been pregnant?" she countered, her voice flat and dangerous.

 _Her mood shifted so rapidly these days._

"I think I'm missing a few of the right parts," the doctor grinned.

"Then stop smiling and shut up."

Spock exchanged glances with Kirk and McCoy. Her mood swings were not only unpredictable, but also of an uncommon intensity. He would never tell her so, but Spock also looked forward to Nyota no longer being pregnant.

"Sorry," she mumbled curtly, crossing her arms over her large belly.

"Well, you two probably should get going," Kirk said.

"Now I know you're not due for another three weeks, but the medical station on Risa confirmed they received your records twenty minutes ago, just in case. So no need to worry there," McCoy added. "Enjoy your babymoon."

"Stop calling it that," Nyota snapped. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. We're just taking a short vacation before heading back to Earth – that's all."

Spock had doubts that the doctor's remark was _literally_ the stupidest thing she'd ever heard, but he'd learned in recent months not to correct her when she made generalizations. He learned not to correct her at _all_.

"Enjoy your _vacation_ ," the doctor replied, rolling his eyes toward the crewman at the transporter controls.

"Energizing," he called.

Spock was flooded with the peculiar sensation of pulling and warmth, and moments later they appeared on the transporter pad at Starbase 66. The overhead light turned green and they stepped away from the platform to allow other personnel to arrive.

Spock followed Nyota down the bustling corridor, but the thick crowds made their passage challenging. Walking had become more difficult for her as the pregnancy progressed, but she still cruised ahead with a swift, commanding waddle that encouraged people to clear a path. Nyota moved as she lived – boldly.

They had a very brief window to arrive at Dock 7, where they would board a civilian transport vessel bound for Risa. They would spend a week on the pleasure planet, and then return to Earth to await the birth of their child.

As of twenty minutes ago, they were on family leave for the next twelve months. They would miss the end of the _Enterprise's_ inaugural five-year mission, but that was of little consequence to Spock. It seemed to bother Nyota, who often found herself torn between motherhood and a promising career in the celestial wilderness.

Her pregnancy had not been planned: it was a product of rekindling their relationship in the aftermath of Krall and months of down time at Yorktown while waiting for the formal commissioning of the _Enterprise-A_. Navigating their lives following the news of impending parenthood had been difficult because there were more questions than answers.

Nyota wished to remain in active service and so did he. Many parents served jointly in Starfleet with success, but children made deep space assignments difficult. Starfleet had millions of personnel, each with valid justifications for requiring family-friendly positions, not only to care for children but also aging or disabled relatives.

Personnel resource officers worked diligently to provide equitable solutions whenever possible, but families could easily become disjointed as one parent would leave for a frontier assignment while the other remained behind in a staff job, only to rotate several years later to help individual career progression. They had both accepted teaching positions at the Academy to last a minimum of three years, but the future beyond that was uncertain.

There was also the question of marriage. Nyota was a fiercely independent woman and he appreciated her for it, but he'd come to the conclusion that she viewed matrimony as an unnecessary gesture of affection. They shared a Vulcan telepathic mating bond, and that seemed to be enough for her. M'Umbha, Nyota's mother, viewed it differently.

Spock liked M'Umbha – she'd insisted on being referred to by her given name when they first met six years earlier – because she bore so many of the traits he admired in her daughter. Sharp and intuitive, M'Umbha Uhura was the fire that forged Nyota. Mother and daughter held many differing opinions but the same passionate resolve, and this construct often led to conflict.

M'Umbha wanted them to marry and have a proper family, but Nyota insisted her mother's values were old-fashioned and irrelevant. In the days after Nyota told him she was pregnant, Spock had deliberated asking her to marry him, but reconsidered after overhearing the intense ire the subject of marriage elicited in her during her weekly transmissions with M'Umbha.

So many things drove her to anger now.

Dr. McCoy explained it was a combination of human pregnancy hormones and the rapidly developing brain of the hybrid Vulcan fetus. Though the child was only one-quarter Vulcan, it would have mostly Vulcan characteristics, including the complex midbrain responsible for psionic telepathy and strong emotions. As a result, Nyota fell victim to a problem encountered by Vulcan females in the later stages of pregnancy, which were random, primitive, _powerful_ emotions generated by the fetus and transmitted to the mother.

There were occasions when Nyota would scream at him for a perceived wrongdoing, only to laugh uncontrollably several moments later. He knew the erratic emotional swings deeply frustrated her, thereby compounding the problem. Spock melded with her several times each day to help her balance the child's emotions with her own, and though this had given her some relief, she often cried at her inability to control her feelings.

He disliked being unable to assist her more and often sought to relieve her burden in other ways, such as performing more domestic chores. This caused her to complain of feeling unneeded. When he carried things for her, she claimed it made her feel too needy. Spock determined long ago there was no correct solution for pleasing Nyota in her current state, but he had not abandoned his attempts.

He finally caught up with Nyota when they turned down the ramp to Dock 7 and the crowds thinned. She was sweating and panting from the exercise, but seemed fixed in her dogged quest to board the _Whipsaw_ immediately, despite the fact it wouldn't depart for another forty-seven minutes.

"You are overheating," he said, gently touching her arm.

"Don't tell me you can't keep up with a pregnant woman," she joked.

"Nyota, it is not a competition."

"I'm fine. Let's just get there so I can put my feet up."

She lengthened her stride and less than two minutes later, they boarded the ship that would take them to Risa.

The _Whipsaw_ was a decommissioned Starfleet science vessel, retrofitted for shuttling passengers and freight between Federation planets on a regular ring route. It would take 14.19 hours to reach their destination, so they secured quarters for the voyage.

The room was cramped but adequate, except for the small bed that was only a meter wide. Nyota had always tended toward violence in her sleep, but as her midsection grew, her nocturnal habits had become more aggressive.

She fractured his nose two months ago in the middle of a nightmare. Dr. McCoy said unusual dreams were also common during pregnancy, and many nights she'd roused him from his slumber and begged to be held. He was always willing to oblige.

She sat down on the tiny bed and sighed. He was adept at reading her mood through the patterns of her breathing, and knew her subtle exhalation was just a symptom of mild exhaustion and annoyance.

"I'm not looking forward to living with my mother," she groaned, flopping backwards on the bed.

"I believe M'Umbha looks forward to living with you."

"I _know_ she does. I love her and I can't wait to see her again, but I know after a few days we're going to drive each other up the wall."

As with most things in recent months, Nyota was in conflict. She wanted M'Umbha present for the unique life transition she was about to encounter. She had many misgivings about motherhood, and wanted her mother to serve as a guiding compass during the first weeks of the child's life, and so M'Umbha had agreed to move into the small house they'd leased in San Francisco for a month.

Spock recognized the value of her experience – she'd raised three children, after all – and welcomed the prospect of her assistance. Even in the animal kingdom, the offspring of social species fared better in the presence of an extended family, and it seemed reasonable to conclude that M'Umbha's skills in child rearing could only be beneficial. In quieter moments, he thought of Amanda, but it was illogical to dwell on what would never be.

Nyota stood suddenly, stripped herself of her maternity uniform, and headed toward the tiny sonic shower encased in the wall. He felt the ship shudder and knew they were underway.

"Are you hungry?" he called after her.

"Starving," she admitted. "I just feel sweaty and gross and want to get clean. I thought we could go find the galley afterward."

Spock began to sort through his neatly packed bags for suitable civilian clothing, selecting a heavy dark sweater and black slacks. He folded his uniform and returned his bag to the floor when Nyota said, "Can you get me my yellow sundress?"

He opened her small duffel and found the item in question located at the top. She stepped from the shower and quickly donned her undergarments, and Spock took care not to allow his eyes to linger on her body for too long. The effects that the pregnancy had wrought on her slender frame made her insecure, and he knew staring amplified her anxiety.

She pulled the billowing dress over her head, and she held her loose hair while he fastened the cloth buttons at the back of her neck. She slid into a pair of flat sandals and gazed at herself in the mirror. He watched her frown and then revert to a smile as her hands began to encircle the swell of her abdomen.

"You're going to wear _that_?" she asked, glancing back at him in the mirror to assess his clothing selection.

"You do not approve?"

"It's _fine_ I guess, but you're dressed like you're going to a funeral in Montreal, not a tropical holiday on Risa."

The truth was she had lowered the environmental settings to fifteen degrees Celsius, and his Vulcan physiology was poorly suited to the cold. She seemed to realize this, because her face fell and she looked to the control panel on the wall by the door.

"I do not mind, Nyota. I want to make you as comfortable as possible."

She rolled her eyes and adjusted the temperature upward by ten degrees and stepped out into the narrow corridor. He discreetly lowered the thermostat back to its original setting, and they walked together side-by-side to the small galley.

They shared a quiet meal of vegetable stew and returned to their quarters so Nyota could rest. She kicked off her sandals and sprawled onto the little bed and very soon was in the midst of fitful sleep.

Spock reached for the PADD in the side pocket of his bag to review new papers in several top-rated astrophysics publications. His joint duties as science officer and first officer consumed much of his time and he'd fallen behind in the latest research over the past year.

As he extracted the device, a slender box fell out along with it. _The ring._

It had belonged to Jana Grayson, his foremother. Spock had never been close to any of his human relations – he had only a few memories of visits to honor human holidays – but in the wake of his mother's death, he had made an effort to bridge the gap between his Vulcan identity and humanity. He had so little family left.

His foremother was a force to be reckoned with, a sharp wit with opinions that worked only in absolutes. Amanda had often called her overbearing and judgmental, and Spock found that assessment to be accurate. She readily admitted she had nothing in common with her half-Vulcan grandson, but she was also quick to tell him she loved him anyway. Jana Grayson also had little family left to her, and so their mutual desire for kinship proved an attractive force.

She had died early last year and Spock had taken leave to be with her at the hospital before her passing. Several days before her death, she had given him a few things that had belonged to Amanda, as well as several heirlooms passed down through her family, including the ring he now held in his hands.

It was a natural pearl set on a delicate band of a gold and palladium alloy and flanked by small diamonds. Spock understood the presentation of a ring was essential to the human tradition of proposing marriage, and though it was illogical and he was nearly certain Nyota had no intention of marrying, he kept it in his possession anyway.

He returned the box to the side pocket and sat in the hard chair by the bed to read. Nyota's snores drifted through the room, interrupted only by an occasional grunt and shift in the position of her body.

He was tired also and wished to lie with her, but he was reluctant to disturb her sleep, so for the next four hours, he turned his attention to scientific journals. He relaxed his mind and was beginning to doze when the room was bathed in red light and a piercing shriek echoed across the walls, which was interrupted by a message:

" _Warning: warp core breach in sixty seconds_."


	2. The Escape

Spock was on his feet in an instant, stretching out his arms to rouse Nyota. The alarm beat him to it, and she scrambled to a sitting position, panic and confusion etched into her face.

The siren continued to wail, and they transformed from an expectant couple en route to a vacation to a pair of decorated Starfleet officers responding to a crisis. Nyota clambered to collect her bag from the overhead shelf but Spock was one step ahead of her, whisking it over his shoulder in a single motion.

"Escape pods?" she shouted as they stormed from their quarters into the hallway.

"I believe the closest bay is located at the aft of the ship through engineering," Spock replied, gently gripping her bicep to steer her out of the way of a crewman sprinting in the opposite direction.

The hallway turned and they raced ahead into a catwalk shrouded in a cloud of suffocating heat. Warp plasma seeped from the chamber, sending radiation plumes upward.

" _Warning: warp core breech in forty-five seconds_."

A deck below, the warp core glowed bright white, nearing its flashpoint with dazzling speed. Spock saw a lone engineer clawing at an emergency panel, screaming in agony as her exposed skin came in contact with the plasma.

 _She was attempting to eject the core._

"Nyota, _go_ ," Spock shouted, pointing to the row of six individual escape pods as he shrugged the bags from his shoulder.

He swung his legs over the railing and landed on the deck below, coughing in the broiling vapor swirling around the dying warp drive.

" _Spock-_ " Nyota screamed.

Her voice was drowned out by a bellowing hiss of steaming plasma coolant. Spock sprinted on instinct toward the engineer fighting to expel the _Whipsaw_ 's overloading core. She was not an engineer, but the ship's captain.

" _Captain_!" he shouted.

The growing hum of the stressed engines dampened all nearby sound, but the woman whipped around and regarded him with a look of steadfast mania.

" _Get out of here!"_ she snarled.

Her face was streaked with angry red blisters, her hands were charred black from plasma burns, and her voice was choked with emotion and heat. _Her lungs were cooking._

She returned to her feeble efforts to restore antimatter containment, her shrieks reduced to rasping moans. Even from three meters away, Spock could barely tolerate the overwhelming heat. The captain would certainly die of her injuries, with or without treatment.

" _Warning: warp core breech in thirty seconds_."

" _Spock_!" Nyota howled. " _Please_!"

Ejecting the core was preferable to fleeing in escape pods, but the window of opportunity had passed. Spock bounded toward a metal ladder, burning his hands on the hot steel and hacking from the radioactive mist billowing through the lower compartment.

He sensed something falling and managed to duck his head to avoid being struck in the face by Nyota's bag. He could see her struggling with someone through the metal grating of the footbridge, and raced up the rungs three at a time.

"I'm _not_ leaving. _Let me go_!" she growled, turning her swollen body away and hip-checking a man into one of the escape pods.

She slapped the exterior ejector switch and the pod raced away from the _Whipsaw_ in a fraction of a second. She was panting, soaked in sweat, barefooted, and _alive_.

"Nyota, _go_!" Spock shouted, climbing faster.

She went to work on preparing the two remaining escape pods for deployment. Spock reached the top of the catwalk and half ran, half crawled to her position. Her modesty dissolved into practicality, and despite the short yellow sundress, she squatted down and struggled against the release bar.

" _ARRRRUGGGGHHHH_!"

She fell backward and Spock managed to catch her before she pitched onto the lower deck. He tried the bar for himself and found it immovable. He stomped on it with as much force as he could manage, but it remained wedged in place.

" _Warning: warp core breech in fifteen seconds_."

He whirled around to the final escape pod and slammed his left foot onto the lever. It gave way easily, and the interior of the pod glowed green. It was designed for one person, but could _theoretically_ accommodate two small individuals: perhaps two adolescents.

Two adults would deplete the pod's oxygen and other resources twice as fast. _She stood the best chance for survival alone._

" _Get in_!" he yelled.

Her eyes surveyed the pod as she stepped forward, before turning to search his face in desperate horror. Spock grabbed his bag and tossed it onto the floor of the pod, grabbing Nyota's hand to steady her as she lowered herself into the jump seat.

"Don't you _dare_!" she cried.

An energetic calm swept over his consciousness when he met her gaze. He observed the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the wild look in her dark eyes, and the promising bulge of her stomach.

" _Ten… nine… eight…_ "

"Nyota, I love-"

He didn't finish the sentence, because the ship jolted and he lost his balance. His fingers slipped on the external deployment switch and he felt himself falling back, but Nyota's hands gripped the plush fabric of his sweater and pulled with freakish strength.

They became a tumble of arms and legs, groping and scrabbling to right themselves in a cramped escape pod.

" _Five… four…_ "

 _They were out of time._

Spock looked under his arm and kicked backwards, smashing his foot into the internal ejection switch. They flew from the belly of the _Whipsaw_ with staggering acceleration, and his head reeled from the rapid change in velocity and pressure.

Nyota had pulled him on top of her, and now it was a problem of simple physics – force equals mass times acceleration.

The magnetohydrodynamic thrusters were pushing them toward a cruising speed of 18,700 kilometers per second. The inertial dampeners compensated for the majority of the acceleration, but at 19.8 meters per second squared times Spock's mass of 101.4 kilograms, he was exerting devastating force on both Nyota and their child. _He was crushing them with a force that had more than doubled his weight._

She uttered a throaty gasp and Spock rotated his left shoulder back in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure on her. Her eyes fluttered and he pushed against the terror bubbling around the edges of his mind.

 _Chaos_.

The small aluminum glass windows filled with blinding light, signaling the total breach of the _Whipsaw_ 's core. The antimatter explosion flung them around the interior of the pod, leaving a trail of cuts and bruises in its wake.

His forehead slammed into an upper compartment, offering a beautiful display of white lights despite his closed eyes. He leaned as far to the left and away from Nyota as possible while attempting to cradle her head between his forearms: she was on the cusp of consciousness.

The pod reached velocity after about fifteen seconds and ceased quaking. The wail of a distant alarm grew louder, indicating his senses were returning. He pushed himself back to assess Nyota's condition. Her eyes were slow to focus and her chest pulsed with shallow breaths.

"Nyota?"

His voice was garbled and he uttered her name a second time, causing her gaze to come to rest on his face. Drooping lids concealed blank, dark eyes.

" _Nyota_?"

"Spock?" she slurred.

The pod's siren almost obscured the word, but her lips traced the sound. Her hands slid along her abdomen, drawing her back to the present.

"Why is- the alert- what's- _how_?" she mumbled.

Spock tried to sit up, but his hip jammed into her ribs. She tried to roll onto her left side, but their legs were tangled. Through a poorly coordinated effort, they tried to find suitable positions in an escape pod built for one.

"What was _that_?" Nyota huffed.

"My elbow."

"No, I mean what the _hell_ was _that_?" Back there?"

Her speech was slow and her breathing was still labored, but she was quickly coming to her senses. She pushed up onto her knees and glided backward in the hard plastic seat, pushing Spock face first into the wall.

"I was attempting to maximize the probability of your survival," he explained, sliding down into the seat.

She ended in his lap, sitting sideways and fighting to make room for her legs. Her burgeoning belly made maneuvering more difficult, and she leaned back to stretch her diaphragm and breathe more easily.

"By _dying_?" she accused.

He flipped open the small interface and toggled through the pod's limited programs. He disengaged the siren, noting that a number of crucial systems were failing. The _Whipsaw's_ outward blast had not destroyed the pod, but the resulting damage was catastrophic.

Hull integrity was down to nineteen percent. Main life support was off-line. The atmospheric generator was simply _gone_ – likely from a collision with debris.

"You were just going to toss me in a pod and say you were only thinking about what's best?" she chided.

"I was also thinking of our child."

" _What_ , now I don't care about our baby?"

"I did not say that."

"Then what _are_ you saying?"

"I suggest you try and calm down to conserve oxygen."

Her eyes narrowed and she sat up, twisting her right leg at an odd angle to straddle him face to face.

"How bad is it?"

"Cursory calculations show we have seventy-one minutes of residual oxygen remaining."

"Are we sending a distress signal?"

"All communications are down."

"But there are other pods nearby and this is a pretty high traffic sector of space. Someone will be along… _seventy-one minutes_?"

"Correct."

"Scanners?"

"Also non operational."

She clenched her teeth, hissing under her breath.

The _Whipsaw_ certainly would have sent a distress signal, and the other pods would be transmitting signals as well. They were only five hours from Starbase 66, four hours from Pyrellia, and nine hours from Risa at warp four. The probability of rescue within twenty-four hours was nearly one hundred percent, but their oxygen would be gone in barely more than an hour.

He could sense her panic and despair through their shared bond. Her face was calm but she was trembling. He explored her eyes, finding them fixed on the wall behind his head.

He knew that she was often afraid when the ship went to red alert or she ventured out on away missions, yet she rarely gave any external indication of her fear. Rather than sink into anxiety, she found a way to navigate it with profound grace. He repressed his fear, but she had adapted to live alongside hers, and in many ways, that made her a far more exceptional creature than he.

She was bracing herself against the wall with her left hand and resting her right on her belly. He abandoned the interface and caressed her cheek. Their eyes met and they leaned forward into a light kiss. A tiny shudder emerged from deep within her core, and she leaned back, shaking her head as if to toss away her misery.

"Well, what _can_ we do?" she said, pursing her lips.

He shifted his weight and she leaned to her right to try to give him better access to the terminal interface. He was beginning to experience short waves of nausea and dizziness, his hands were tender with burns, and his legs were losing sensation from the awkward way she was sitting in his lap, but he understood she was also far from comfortable.

He began to extrapolate their position from their last known location. The nearest system was 37 Geminorum, a G class star with a large number of exoplanets, including Kantare, an M class planet inhabited by a warp capable species. Unfortunately where the Kantare were concerned, warp capable and warp _willing_ were not interchangeable.

The Kantare were not openly hostile, but were staunch isolationists following the destruction of a colony called Kotara Barath in 2191. Despite the Federation's attempts to forge a more peaceful relationship, there were still sporadic reports of conservative factions firing on vessels that encroached upon their space.

He ran a diagnostic on the impulse engine and plotted a preliminary course. The reclusive nature of the Kantare was irrelevant – they would never reach the planet. The pod was equipped with a nuclear fusion impulse engine that had remained shielded from the blast by a tightly sealed duranium housing. The engine and the magnetic coils were fully operational, but even at top speed, they would only make it halfway to Kantare.

According to star charts, there was a massive class D planet within range that had forty-four moons, two of which were class M. He input the coordinates to the nearest satellite and brought the impulse engines online. He glanced at the distance, ran a quick calculation in his head, and began a series of shallow, deliberate breaths.

"So what's our plan?" Nyota asked.

"I am setting a course to an uninhabited class M moon in the 37 Geminorum system. The database has no information about the climate, but I can devise no other alternatives."

"How far away?"

"One hundred three million, nine hundred-."

"As a unit of _time_ , not _distance_."

"Eighty minutes."

"You said we only have seventy-one minutes of oxygen left."

"Sixty-nine minutes as of right now."

"So we're just going to hold our breath for the other eleven minutes?"

 _She would have stood a greater chance for survival without him._

"I intended to slow my breathing through meditation, and it would be helpful if you could attempt to do the same."

She grimaced and looked up. Through their years together, she had become proficient in a number of meditative techniques under his tutelage.

He readied himself to slow his breathing even further and considered the next immediate priority, but Nyota beat him to it. She reached for the overheard compartment and fought against a sticky latch.

"We need to locate-" he began.

The door swung open and a heavy case smashed down on the top of his head and fell to their feet.

"Sorry," she muttered, reaching behind her.

She nearly fell backwards but caught herself by grabbing his neck.

 _This was not conserving oxygen._

"... a medical kit," he finished, rubbing the sore spot on his scalp.

The small box she retrieved from the floor of the pod indicated they were of one mind. She extracted a hypospray and fumbled through a series of vials, selecting an orange canister and loading it into the injector. _Arithrazine: standard treatment for ionizing radiation exposure_.

She hit him in the neck with the hypospray before he could speak further, and a warm sensation spread through his chest and down to his extremities. His nausea retreated, and he found his focus was growing sharper.

"Radiation sickness from the warp plasma," she whispered.

He was more concerned for Nyota's health and that of their child. Her hands were shaking and she was chewing hard on her lower lip.

"Do you think-"

"The fetus is nearly full term and you received far less radiation exposure on the upper deck," he interrupted. "You are also receiving immediate treatment with arithrazine. Worry is unproductive and illogical."

She clenched her jaw and nodded, calibrating a dose for herself. He took the hypospray and delivered a gentle injection into her neck. She rubbed her collarbone and nodded again.

He could see mild burns on her bare feet from the steam that had come up through the metal grating of the catwalk in the _Whipsaw's_ main engineering room. They both needed more comprehensive medical care, but their more minor injuries would have to wait. They were running out of oxygen, and _quickly_.

She settled her head on his shoulder, and he rested his cheek on the top of her head. He knew the awkward position of straddling him must be causing more undue stress on her back, and it was regrettable that he could not do more to ease her pain.

He began to work toward limiting his breathing, keeping his ears sharp for any updates from the pod's computers. As he folded deeper into his subconscious, Nyota turned her head and shifted her weight.

" _Spock_?"

"Yes?"

"How much longer?"

He opened his eyes and glanced at the navigational interface. The air was stale and had a thick quality from the rising levels of carbon dioxide.

"Nineteen minutes. Why?"

"I have to pee."


	3. The Landing

Angry blood hammered through his head, splitting his brain into shards of throbbing agony. Only the shuddering of his heart low in his chest interrupted the dizziness and the swirls of black coating his vision.

He couldn't hear Nyota, but that could be a good sign. Her head was slumped on his shoulder but her body was trembling. He could only hope she was clinging to the last vestiges of oxygen remaining in the cabin of the tiny pod. _She and the child needed it more than he did._

He strained his eyelids open and initialized the necessary sequence to land the pod on the surface of the M class moon below. Since his earliest days in Starfleet, he always checked the computer's calculations, but not this time. His mind was lost in the space between consciousness and darkness and his mental acuity was waning.

He turned his life – and the lives of his mate and their unborn child – over to a machine. It was all he could do.

" _Autopilot landing sequence engaged_ ," the computer chimed. " _Landing in forty-five seconds_."

His consciousness slipped further to the gentle rocking of the thrusters engaging beneath them. He rested his cheek on Nyota's head and held a shallow breath.

" _Landing in thirty seconds_."

Time warp was a well-documented phenomenon, suggesting that the brain perceived time more slowly under periods of duress. Research had demonstrated it was an illusion created by the memory center of the brain, but for Spock, those forty-five seconds felt an eternity, because nestled deep within his psyche was the fear they would be his last. _Her_ last. _Their_ last.

" _Landing in ten seconds_."

The pod landed with a soft thump and he felt Nyota clawing at his shirt. His head lolled on the back of the hard jump, too heavy and clumsy to lift.

A grinding metallic sound ushered in a blast of wet, icy air that pierced his lungs. His breathing came in ragged gasps through coughing and pain. They writhed together for several moments until his disorientation began to fade and he could feel the warm touch of Nyota's palm on his face.

"Spock?"

Her hand tapped his cheek.

"Spock!"

He sat upright, moving with the pain pulsing through his temples and forehead. His eyes flickered open, taking in the gray light of the planet.

"Spock?"

"Yes, Nyota?"

His voice sounded garbled and far away, and his headache was only growing deeper. He closed his eyes to concentrate on centering his mind but was interrupted by the sound of splashing.

He caught sight of Nyota crouching on the floor, halfway through the open port of the pod and clutching the doorframe for balance. Her face was contorted in simultaneous misery and relief, and when she noticed him watching her, she barked a pitiful laugh. He understood that frequent urination was an inevitable symptom of the later stages of pregnancy as the fetus overcrowded the bladder. Though he knew she wouldn't care, he closed his eyes again to give her some semblance of privacy.

When he heard her begin to shuffle to a standing position, he rose to help her preserve her balance. He caught sight of the planet for the first time through the hatch: their situation was far from optimal.

They had landed in a chilly swamp. A pungent smell hinted at a high concentration of sulfur and decaying organic matter, and a thick fog rolled over the ground, limiting his visibility. The dim light outside was brighter now than it had been when Nyota first opened the pod. It was dawn on their temporary home.

He stretched his tight muscles and stepped down onto the wet planet, his feet sinking several centimeters into the squishy, soft soil.

Nyota's head poked through the portal after him, surveying the dismal landscape. Her trembling had metamorphosed into shivering, and the light yellow sundress did little to preserve her body heat.

"My boots are in my bag," he said, nodding to the small black duffel by her bare feet on the floor of the cabin. "Take whatever you need to keep warm."

He located a tricorder in a compartment under the seat and set to work analyzing the atmosphere and climate. The gravity was light: approximately two-thirds that of Earth. The current temperature was only four degrees Celsius, but the atmosphere was nitrogen-oxygen and solar radiation was within acceptable levels.

"Ugh! _Dammit_!"

He heard a crash inside the pod and raced to investigate. He discovered Nyota attempting to put her left leg into his uniform slacks, but she was having difficulty on her burned feet.

"Let me assist you," he urged.

"I don't need your help," she snapped.

"I did not ask if you needed it."

Her mood was transitioning into anger and she seemed to sense it. She plopped down into the jump seat and continued to shake. It had been more than a full day since he'd mind melded with her, and the strain of recent events was clear on her face.

He climbed into the pod, collected the med kit, and went to work on her feet with the dermal regenerator. The burns were not severe: the bottoms of her feet were red, swollen, and tender to the touch, but there was no blistering or charring.

"Thank you," she sniffed.

He finished and helped her to her feet, steadying her while she drew his trousers around her hips. Her midsection was too large to fasten them closed, so he cut the restraint from the seat for her to use as a makeshift belt and secure the pants beneath her belly. She pulled her head through one of his sweaters and rolled up the sleeves while he set out several pairs of socks and his boots. Though she had grown quite big, his clothing still swallowed her.

He knew she would have difficulty reaching over the bulk of her stomach to don footwear, so he stuffed socks into the toes of his boots so they would fit her better and began to slide a pair of thick, black socks over her slender feet.

She uttered a frustrated sigh and rolled her head back against the seat.

"I hate being helpless."

"Nyota, I never claimed you were helpless-"

"You never had to! _I am_!"

She snatched the dermal regenerator from the medical kit and he felt a warm, tingling sensation ripple through his forehead to his scalp. He hadn't even been aware he was injured.

"Nyota, please-"

"You were just going to kill yourself back there and for _what_?" she yelped. "Because I stand a better chance of surviving without you? I can't even put on your damn boots by myself!"

"You should have left at the earliest opportunity," he countered. "Had you done that-"

"While you were trying to play hero with the warp core?" she interrupted. "That woman, she- she-"

"She died in an attempt to avoid disaster," he finished. "It does not alter the fact that if you had left immediately, you would have been-"

"Don't even finish that sentence," she hissed, grabbing his left elbow to suture a gash that ran from the back of his hand to his wrist.

He completed fastening the boot on her right foot with his free right hand and waited for her to finish mending his deep laceration.

"Nyota, my only intention was to save as many lives as possible. Averting a warp core breach was preferable to utilizing the escape pods."

"I _know_ ," she growled. "But I don't understand why you think I would just leave you there."

"Because our child needs you."

" _I_ need you, Spock. _I need you_! Our baby needs you. Of course we can _survive_ without you, but I would much rather live with you!"

The was little point in asserting the obvious claim that since the child was still gestating, it was entirely dependent upon her and therefore, it actually _did_ need her more than it needed him.

She was panting and he could see tears cresting the corners of her eyes. He reached for her face but she pulled away.

"You can't fix this with a mind meld! This isn't about me being emotional, Spock," she sighed as the first tears began to fall. "It's about you thinking about everyone else first."

"I was thinking of _you_."

"And _I_ was thinking of _us_."

She pushed past him and stepped out of the escape pod. She sunk in the mud and trudged around to the back of the vessel, her wheezes and anger disappearing into a chorus of metallic scraping and thumps.

Arguing over philosophical viewpoints was fruitless. It was logical to consider the needs of the many before considering his own life. _Or was it_?

" _Ugh_! Why won't it come off? Stupid, _worthless_ -"

There was no point in pondering the ethics of assigning greater value to his life based on being a member of an endangered species on the cusp of fatherhood at this moment.

"Nyota, what are you doing?"

"I was hoping to avoid giving birth in this smelly swamp so I thought I'd show a little initiative and fix the broken comm equipment," she said through clenched teeth. "Unless you had some other task for me. _Sir_."

She only deferred to his rank in private when she was especially livid. This conversation was going worse than he'd expected.

"Please try to calm down," he said, taking several steps in her direction.

"I… _hate_ \- I hate- I'm so-"

She was in the midst of an emotional chain reaction driven by hormones and random fetal neural activity. The muscles in her face were furious, but her eyes were tired, panicked, and sad.

"I hate that I can't control myself anymore," she sobbed. "My feelings. This- this-"

"Dr. McCoy has explained repeatedly that this is normal and that carrying a Vulcan fetus would be exceptionally difficult," Spock replied, inching closer to her. "It does not mean you are weak."

" _Screw him_! _And_ that stupid guide he gave me," she seethed. "It has all these sections about breastfeeding and diapering and 'finding time for me' but absolutely _nothing_ about what to do when your baby's father drags you out into space and maroons you in a bog. And _yes_ – _I know I'm being irrational_!"

Spock extended his arms, cupped her jaw with his hands, and then slid his right hand along her cheek.

Their minds met, and the swell of emotion billowing from her threatened to overwhelm him. She choked on her tears and began to take staggered breaths. This wasn't her fault and they both knew it, but knowledge of this fact never stopped her guilt about her mood swings.

She wrenched her eyes shut and thicker tears streamed down her face. She nodded vigorously and murmured, "I'm so sorry for everything I'm putting you through."

He released her face to embrace her and whispered, "I know this has been challenging for you."

He held her for a few more moments, attentive to the pattern of her breathing. She stiffened, pulling away from him to clutch her stomach.

"The baby is moving again," she beamed. "I hadn't felt anything since we left _Enterprise_ , and after everything that's happened, well..."

The relief was evident in the glow of her face, but he felt his own push of anxiety start to fade. Nyota's condition had been the catalyst for many emotions, and not all of them had been hers. He had spent a lifetime learning to suppress those emotions and conceal those he failed to subdue, but recent months had been quite taxing.

He took a cautious step toward her and she took his right hand and placed it low on her belly. He felt a rapid flurry of movement and extinguished his budding sentimentality. She sighed and looked downward.

"She always kicks harder for you."

" _She_?"

"She… he…" she shrugged.

This was the first time she'd ever used a specific pronoun when speaking of their child. Nyota had refused to learn the sex of the baby, and Spock had no preference for knowing or not knowing, given the information would become evident eventually.

"Speaking of which – I wasn't kidding when I said I would prefer not to have our baby in a swamp. Where are we again?"

"An M-class moon designated 37G-7D-27."

"Has a nice ring to it," she replied with a wide roll of her eyes. "Still, maybe not the best place for setting up a nursery."

She pulled one of her feet from several centimeters of mud, emitting a thick, squelching sound. Heavy vapor rolled along the ground in waves, and though the nearby star was shedding more light on their surroundings, it was still very dark.

She pivoted on her heel and stumbled through the mud toward the pod, feeling her hands along the wreckage of the hull for the external communication equipment.

"Can you see if there's a hyperspanner in the pod?" she asked.

"Certainly."

He was grateful for her skillset. As the _Enterprise_ 's science officer, he was certainly competent in communications, but Nyota's talents in the field far surpassed his own. She had a careful ear and an exceptional gift for signaling improvisation.

"You said we weren't that far off the beaten path, right?"

"Correct," he explained. "Any signal we can transmit has a high probability of being received."

He located a small pouch of engineering equipment, noting several deficiencies. It wasn't uncommon for crews to raid emergency supplies due to logistical shortages or laziness, and the crew of the _Whipsaw_ were no exception. He pulled the jump seat up and continued his search.

"Did you say we're in the 37-Geminorum system?" she called.

"I did."

"I can't say I've memorized a lot of star charts, but don't the Kantare live in this system?"

"They do."

"I didn't think they liked visitors."

"They don't."

He heard a loud clanking sound echo from the back of the pod and the immediate response of her swearing.

" _Nyota_?"

"I'm _fine_!" she whined. "I just pinched my finger."

He finally located a hyperspanner and met her outside at the rear of the pod, finding her bent over to examine the subspace communicator mounted on the vessel's hull.

"The transceiver _looks_ fine," she said, biting her lip. "Maybe the heat shorted out some of the capacitor coils."

She stood, placing her hands on the small of her back and stretched her calves upward. Spock knelt to take a closer look and agreed with her assessment. The exterior of the pod had been badly damaged from the antimatter blast and subsequent heat of the plasma – a consequence of their delayed ejection from the ship.

"Any chance I could get you to pry that off of there so we can take a closer look at it?" she murmured.

 _How surprising that she would ask for his assistance._

She had always been independent, but once she'd discovered she was pregnant, she'd grown accustomed to refusing his help on an hourly basis.

She gave him a sidelong glance and added, "I'm glad you're here. You're really good with repairing stuff."

He stooped and set to work removing the bolts holding the subspace communicator to the pod, but paused when he heard the squishing of the wet soil behind him.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"I have to pee. _Again_."

"Please be careful."

"I'm just going right over there," she scoffed, pointing to a row of thin shrubs and small trees fifteen meters away.

He nodded, but he was wary of their unfamiliar surroundings. He returned his attention to the communicator, but trained his sensitive ears in her direction.

One minute passed, then two, and just as he stood to check on her, he heard an earsplitting scream.


	4. The Snag

The sound of violent splashing drowned out her screams and for a fraction of a second, his rational mind disconnected and the primal, instinctive areas of his brain engaged. A flash of rage coursed through him as his body turned in the direction of the sound, but his logic quickly prevailed.

He pivoted on his left foot, stooping down to grab the long hyperspanner on the ground and raced in her direction. Her screams turned into angry yelling, and after two long strides, he saw the source of her panic.

A long, serpentine creature had emerged from the water and chased her onto the remains of a decomposing tree. Nyota was typically an agile creature, but her enormous belly skewed her balance, and the oversized boots made the climb up the muddy slope awkward. She struggled mightily, grasping at rotting branches that gave way in her hands.

The animal's long jaws snapped at her legs, catching several teeth in the fabric of her trousers. It pulled her halfway into the water and she pummeled its thick, scaly head with the foot of her free leg while twisting her body to claw at the roots of the stump. The animal's death grip on her leg dragged her further into the pond.

Spock was upon it seconds later, leaping into the water and clubbing its broad head with a backswing from the long, tritanium hyperspanner. Its mouth sprung open, recoiling from the pain of the blind assault. It turned on Spock and after several more sharp, merciless blows from the hyperspanner, and the animal floated dead in the water.

"Are you alright?" he asked, slogging through the water in her direction.

She released her hold on the tree and slid down the mucky embankment into the knee-deep water beside him, gasping through her curses. He held his hand out to steady her and then leapt up onto solid ground and extended his arms to help her up.

" _Nyota_?"

"I'm _fine_ ," she muttered, leaning forward to rest her hands on her knees and catch her breath.

She observed the shreds of fabric hanging below her right calf. She had several superficial cuts to her shin, but had been fortunate that the animal had only managed to grab the clothing.

"Sorry about your pants," she mumbled with a weak laugh, glancing at her dead attacker.

It was a big creature, approximately three meters long from nose to tail, though the tail accounted for most of the body length. It was crudely analogous to a Terran crocodile with a slimmer body, a flatter head, and fearsome, interlocking, five-centimeter long teeth that protruded along the sides of its jaws. It was almost certainly an exclusively aquatic animal due to the rough, gray scales and limbs that more closely resembled flippers than feet.

Its death was regrettable. As a Vulcan, he respected all life and abhorred killing, yet even Vulcans acknowledged limits to pacifist principles and made exceptions for self-defense. The animal was only fighting for its next meal, but Nyota had been fighting for her life.

It was the true, brutal arrangement of nature. He had learned firsthand during the kahs-wan ritual of his adolescence that despite civilization and technology, no one was ever truly exempt from the natural world.

"Let's get back to the pod," he said, eyeing the thick streaks of mud running down the front of her wet clothes.

More splashing erupted from the water to their right. Two more of the animals had arrived and began making short work of the carcass. Nyota made a face.

"How did you fall in?" he asked, noting the meter drop from the embankment to the water.

"I was trying to use the tree for balance but lost my footing," she explained.

"Perhaps next time you need to relieve yourself, you should avoid an area near the water."

"My boyfriend, the _genius_ ," she mocked, her voice flat and low. "You know, I wasn't expecting my choice of location to literally try to bite me in the ass."

She glared at him and then clamped her eyes shut, mumbling, "I'm sorry… _and_ _thanks_."

They marched back to the pod in silence. Nyota stripped off the muddy trousers and sweater and allowed Spock to treat the cuts on her right leg with the dermal regenerator. She put on the last set of clean clothes from his bag and hung the muddy ones to dry, then set to work examining the communication equipment.

He left her to it, logically opting to perform the more physically arduous tasks of inventorying their supplies and establishing a camp. The pod was designed to be converted into a shelter in the event of an emergency landing, and he began stripping away the seat and storage compartments to hollow out the interior.

The end result yielded a shelter 2 meters long by 1.25 meters wide and deep – not quite a coffin, but not far from it for a pregnant human female and a Vulcan who measured 1.95 meters in height. It would be snug, but it would be dry and secure.

He opened the first removable compartment and discovered miscellaneous survival gear. He laid the contents next to the engineering equipment, accounting for a multipurpose hand tool, a small sewing kit, a 5 liter metal can, a low energy hand phaser, a reusable chemiluminescent lamp, a set of ratchet straps, a hatchet, a spool of parachute cord, a package of resealable waterproof bags, surveyor's tape, and a fire striker.

He sealed the pod's computer and tricorder into one of the waterproof bags and set it atop the survival gear.

The second locker was lighter and contained fire resistant blankets, a poncho, a heavy tarp, nylon overshoes, thermal heat packs, a hat, water resistant gloves, radiation goggles, and a snowsuit. These supplies would be useful, given then computer's earlier atmospheric calculations estimated nightly temperatures would fall to approximately negative fifteen degrees Celsius.

The third compartment contained the medical kit and engineering equipment, which meant the fourth and final locker contained the rations. When he cracked the lid, he found an osmotic water purification system with five liters of potable water. Underneath the purifier were the rations, and he was concerned to discover only two days worth of food for a single individual. Per Federation regulations, standard Starfleet escape pods had to provide provisions for seven days per person. The _Whipsaw_ had clearly not been in compliance, but there was no safety officer to take his complaint.

He began to analyze the situation. Once she restored the communication equipment and they could broadcast a distress signal, their chances of being rescued within twenty-four hours were close to one hundred percent. In that case, one day of rations would be sufficient.

Estimating their time to rescue was far more difficult if the communications equipment was beyond repair. The moon occupied a well-traveled region of space, but nothing in the database indicated it possessed anything of economic or scientific importance that would draw many visitors.

He moved to the back of the pod to check the status of her progress.

"Nyota-"

" _What_?"

She had the transceiver module completely disassembled and was staring disinterestedly at the components.

"Sorry… _sorry_ ," she sighed, holding up a sublight signal processor for closer inspection. "I don't know what's wrong. There's some damage to the casing but the internal components are good to go. I can power it on, but I can't send a signal."

"What about the Doppler compensator?"

"It working just fine – the Heisenberg compensator too – but even _without_ it, I should be able to send a short range message. I can't get _anything_ out."

"Have you checked the an-"

"Antenna array?" she snapped, reaching for the transceiver components to begin reassembling them. "I'm not a first year cadet."

"I am merely trying to help troubleshoot the issue."

She gritted her teeth and sighed. "That was the _first_ thing I checked, since it's embedded in the hull and the hull was shredded in the blast. I tested it and it's fine, believe it or not. Every component is working, tested, connected, and ready to go."

"Can you think of any-"

" _No_."

"Are the power sources stable?"

" _Yes_."

"Are there alternative power sources you could try?"

"Alternative power sources? Like _what_? This thing doesn't run on happy thoughts," she sneered.

 _Heightened sarcasm – another symptom of pregnancy._

"If you are certain the equipment is functioning properly, perhaps there is an external complication you have not considered," he replied, returning to the stack of supplies to collect the tricorder.

"We're in the middle of a swamp," she shrugged. "Doesn't seem like the kind of place to have a high concentration of elements that would interfere with subspace EM radiation, but _maybe_."

She finished putting the transceiver back together and stood clumsily to look over his shoulder. The results were puzzling.

The tricorder showed the moon's crust had a composition similar to Earth's – primarily oxygen and silicon with trace amounts of iron and aluminum. Like Nyota had hypothesized, there was no natural explanation for the transceiver's inability to broadcast.

"The transceiver is unable to transmit, but can it _receive_ a signal?" he asked.

"I don't know," she admitted. "Do you have a communicator or a PADD?"

He extracted his personal PADD from his duffel bag, and when he attempted to send a signal, the mystery deepened. His PADD had functioned perfectly aboard the _Whipsaw_ , and there was no obvious reason why it was unable to transmit a simple signal to a transceiver that was only three meters away.

"So we can't transmit on subspace and we can't even transmit on the regular EM spectrum," she groaned, covering her face with her hands. "If I didn't know better, I'd say there was a dampening field. But that makes no sense: we're on an uninhabited moon."

"The sensors on the pod were damaged," he reminded her. "We are not certain this moon _is_ uninhabited."

"The database said it was," she argued. "How old was that information?"

"The Federation's last survey of this moon was conducted in 2190, before the Kantare adopted a policy of isolationism."

They looked at each other, and Spock tried to interpret her thoughts in her facial expressions. _She was trying to appear calm, but she was worried._

"I suggest we continue to work on the communication equipment," he urged, returning the tricorder and his PADD to the waterproof bag.

Her eyes flicked in his direction. The subtle purse of her lips and squint of her eyes indicated she thought it would be pointless, but much to his surprise, she agreed.

They spent the next five hours brainstorming and theorizing, stopping every so often to analyze some component of the communications equipment. After finding no resolution, they began considering alternative communication strategies in the form optical methods, but Nyota quickly dismissed each. They simply lacked the necessary equipment.

The moon had a short 16.9-hour day, and very soon the sun began to set, casting a steel gray haze over their work. The misty vapor returned, nearly obscuring the ground, and the temperature began to plummet.

"What's there to eat?" she asked, rubbing her stomach.

He had been so focused on solving the immediate problem of communicating a distress signal that he'd overlooked her physical condition. She needed food, water, and rest, particularly after the day's harrowing events, yet he was working her like a newly pinned ensign.

She looked worn, anxious, and exhausted, so he decided against revealing their dire food shortage for the time being.

"Go lie down in the pod," he urged. "I'll secure the equipment."

He expected an argument about being babied, but she offered a weak nod and slumped through the pod's hatch without a word. He packed the radio equipment into two waterproof bags and sealed it in the locker with the engineering and medical supplies.

He reassessed their food stores and began totaling the caloric content of the meager rations. Nyota had increased nutritional demands, but his Vulcan physiology would allow him to function normally without food for three days before he experienced mild physical problems such as dizziness and slower cognitive processing.

Yet it was logical to conclude there was a diminishing return to forgoing sustenance. Nyota needed food, but due to her condition, she also needed help, whether or not she wanted to admit it. She was not weak, but she _was_ vulnerable. It had been logical to sacrifice himself to put her in an escape pod when she had a high probability of rescue, but now that they were stranded here for the foreseeable future, she would need him. Her best chance for survival – and the survival of their child – required him to stay healthy as well.

Tomorrow he would need to begin foraging for food. From his preliminary survey of their surroundings, there did not appear to be much in the way of edible plant life, but the scaly carnivore that attacked Nyota had demonstrated that there _were_ animal life forms. Spock had never eaten animal flesh. He found the idea unsettling, but Surak's teachings made exceptions for killing in order to preserve one's own life.

He extracted a single serving of the nutrient dense emergency rations and a liter of water and sealed the locker. He collected the lamp, blankets, hand phaser, poncho, and snowsuit and met Nyota in the pod.

She was already asleep, so he took the opportunity to stack the supply lockers and secure them with the ratchet straps to deter any curious animals.

She was sitting up and rubbing her eyes when he returned. A deep rumble escaped her belly, causing her to wince.

"Here," he said, offering her the paltry provisions.

Nutrition scientists had spent centuries perfecting emergency rations, always seeking the perfect balance between shelf life and nutrient density, and palatability was often the first variable sacrificed. Nyota had in her possession two small bars, one gray and rich in protein and the other green and packed with carbohydrates.

She took a very cautious, very _loud_ bite and frowned, asking, "Were these _designed_ to break teeth or was that just a happy accident?"

He offered her the water bottle and she managed to choke one down, working her jaw to exhaustion through crunching.

"Aren't you going to eat?" she asked, taking a bite of the second bar.

He did not prefer to lie, but he also did not prefer to have another confrontation with her.

"I ate while I packed the supplies," he said, crouching to begin smoothing the snowsuit over the bare floor of the pod.

The seat had folded out into a stiff bed, but it was barely wide enough for Nyota. Sleeping on interior of the pod's duranium hull would cause rapid loss of body heat through conduction, and he needed a way to insulate himself from the metallic floor. The snowsuit turned out to be a moderately comfortable mattress, so he surrendered it to her and took the hard, retrofitted seat for himself.

He sealed the pod and engaged the atmospheric recycler while she spread out the blankets, and soon they lay down to sleep. She curled her back against his chest and he wrapped his arm around her, taking in the scent of her hair and absorbing the rise and fall of her chest.

He felt a hard push underneath his hand – their child was moving again. A loud exhalation escaped her lips, releasing tension, frustration, and despair. A snicker quickly followed, and she mumbled, "We should be arriving on Risa right about now."

"We were not scheduled to arrive for another hour," he replied.

"Yet here we are," she sighed.

Several seconds passed before she said, " _Spock_?"

"Yes, Nyota?"

"I'm so thankful for you."

Her voice cracked and she uttered a painful sigh.

"I am grateful for you also," he admitted.

"I'm so sorry I've been so horrible," she sniffed.

"You have apologized many times, and each time I have told you that you have nothing for which to apologize. I realize this had been very difficult for you."

He felt her shudder and he melded his mind to hers again. As his hand traveled across her cheek, it encountered a wet stream of tears. Her mind was in a state of complete disarray. She wasn't just afraid: she was _terrified_. Eventually she fell into a fitful sleep in his arms but he lie awake, struggling to center his focus.

By Dr. McCoy's estimation, she was not due for another three weeks.

She shifted in her sleep and he felt the child stirring within her belly once again and he paused at the thought that an estimation was just that – an _estimate_.


	5. The Others

It was an unwritten rule in Starfleet that a person should sleep and eat when the opportunity presented itself, since routine was never a guarantee. Spock regretted overlooking this rule while aboard the _Whipsaw_.

He lie awake in the pod with a gnawing hunger in his belly, feeling more tired than before his futile attempts at rest. Nyota had woken six times during the night to relieve herself, and because he was wary of letting her trek alone through the darkness, he shadowed each excursion. She disliked her Vulcan sentry almost as much as he disliked invading her privacy, but she was too tired to complain.

She _did_ complain about her hips and pelvis hurting, waking twice from the discomfort in tears. The pain relievers in the medical kit were contraindicated for pregnancy, so he proposed Vulcan neuropressure instead. When properly applied for musculoskeletal pain, neuropressure was _extremely_ uncomfortable but reasonably efficacious at providing relief.

The first time he offered, she gritted her teeth, rubbed her belly, and declared, "I think you've done enough without torturing me with your Vulcan chiropractic voodoo."

When her soft whimpers and groans roused her from her sleep less than an hour later, she was a little more open to suggestion. She howled as he dug his fingertips and knuckles into pressure points near her pelvis and at the base of her spine, transforming herself into a poetess of profanity.

When he was done, rivers of emotion ran down her face as she curled into his arms and fell asleep, only to wake forty-five minutes later to urinate again. The gradually rising temperature in the pod told him that day had broken, but Nyota had only just drifted back to sleep and was using his left arm for a pillow.

He rested his right hand on her stomach and felt the child respond with a burst of activity. Nyota grunted and he held his breath, waiting to see if she would wake. Instead she rolled onto her back and moaned. The weight of her head was quickly cutting off circulation to his lower arm, but he reasoned he could ignore the tingling sensation in his fingers for a while longer.

Suddenly, he felt a peculiar hardening in the musculature of her abdomen. Nyota's mouth twitched and she turned to face him, nuzzling his neck with her forehead. Her warm, heavy breaths rolled down his chest – she was still sound asleep. He continued to explore their child's movements, gently rubbing his fingers over her belly to experience the gentle flutters and kicks.

His Vulcan upbringing had given him a science education of considerable breadth and depth, but biological disciplines had never captivated him the way computers, engineering, astronomy, and physics had. He could recall in great detail the numerous facets of Vulcan physiology, but his knowledge of human physiology was poor. His familiarity with human obstetrics was worse.

By custom, Vulcan fathers didn't attend the births of their children. He had gone with Nyota to her appointments when he was able and listened to her worry over various details of raising and caring for their baby, but he had never considered the possibility that he alone would be responsible for assisting her during childbirth.

He had a sufficient understanding of the reproductive cycles of placental mammals, but he was not confident in his ability to help her deliver their child. His practical knowledge on the subject was limited to an experience from his youth: he had visited an animal conservatory in Shi'Kahr and witnessed the birth of a litter of voles. He suspected she wouldn't be pleased to have her labor compared to that of a ground-dwelling rodent native to his former home world, so he decided to research the topic further in the pod's medical database at the earliest practical opportunity.

He brushed the hair from her face and when he pulled his hand back, he discovered her eyes were open. They watched each other at length; Spock almost felt at peace in the silence. Eventually she sat up and the blood rushed back into his left arm with prickling fury.

She stretched her back and cracked the hatch and allowed the frigid, humid air to fill the pod. Nyota gagged on the intense smell of the sulfur and held her nose.

"Home sweet home," she growled.

Her words were intended as a joke, but Spock preferred to take them seriously. It was their first full day on the planet, and without means to signal for rescue, they needed to consider making long term plans. He walked around the camp in quiet reflection, constructing the most logical course of action.

Every Starfleet survival course drilled the four critical priorities: shelter, water, energy, and food, and in that order for typical scenarios on an M-class planet.

The pod provided sufficient provisional shelter from the elements, though judging by the nearby terrain, it was in a lower area than he would prefer and thus could be susceptible to flooding.

They had four remaining liters of potable water from the survival stores and the ability to generate more with the osmotic purifier, as well as easy access to abundant sources of water, even if those sources were home to dangerous predators.

The pod's small nuclear fusion impulse engine was designed to be converted into a power source and would be vital to charging the power cells of their multitronic equipment, as well as more mundane operations like providing an heat source for warmth and cooking. Adapting the engine would take several days and involve a considerable amount of heavy labor, so he considered it a low priority when they could get by in the interim with a wood burning fire.

Since all other necessities were currently met, the most pressing problem to solve was food. The average Vulcan could survive four weeks without food under normal conditions; the average human, three. He didn't know how pregnancy complicated that benchmark, but he didn't intend to find out. Allowing her to go prolonged periods without nutrition was simply unacceptable.

They were both vegetarians, and though he was willing to disregard his philosophical beliefs and consume animal flesh if _absolutely_ necessary in order to survive, he wasn't sure how she would assess such a cruel ultimatum. If he knew Nyota as well as he believed he did, she would agree with his position. If she was anything, she was a survivor.

He noticed her standing with her arms crossed over the bulge of her belly, staring intently at the tied down storage compartments. "What do we have for water?"

"An osmotic purifier," he replied.

"Have you looked at the pod's engine?" she asked.

"I estimate it will take two full days to convert into a usable power source."

" _Hmmmm._ "

It was clear they were already of one mind – assess, plan, and adapt. They traded their thoughts on establishing a camp and came to the same conclusion – he would perform a reconnaissance of the surrounding area and search for food while she continued to dissect the communications equipment. He laid out the storage lockers for her so she could avoid heavy lifting and helped her set up the pod's computer.

He sensed she was caught halfway between resentment and relief for being unable to forage with him. He wasn't sure if there was anything she detested more than being told she shouldn't do something and he had learned long ago to never frame any statements or questions under that premise. As badly as her hips and back hurt, they both know that trudging around a muddy, hilly swamp was out of the question.

For a longer-term bivouac site, they would also need to consider issues with power generation, defense, sustainable food sources, personal hygiene, and latrines and of course there was the looming prospect of a newly born infant, but those things were irrelevant if they could not obtain food.

He packed the hatchet, a liter of water, and one of the waterproof bags into the snowsuit stuff sack and fitted the straps to wear it comfortably on his back. He fixed the surveyor's tape and tricorder to his belt and prepared to bid Nyota goodbye when she stopped him and insisted and switching footwear.

"These are your work boots," she argued. "They're better for a long hike than the shoes you're wearing. Besides, I'm just going to be piddling around here."

He yielded to her logic and minutes later set off in the direction of the rising sun. He followed the path of the stream Nyota had fallen into the day before, scanning the area with the tricorder and stopping every fifty meters to mark a tree with a strip of the biodegradable, orange engineering tape.

The terrain was rocky, wet, and littered with rotting trees. The few living trees he discovered produced a sugary sap that could potentially be tapped for food. _An auspicious start._

The handful of ferns and mosses he discovered were unfit for consumption, but the area was teeming with insect life and he spotted several species of iridescent amphibians. He wasn't certain, but he did not imagine Nyota would react well to eating small beetles and frog-like creatures.

The lighter gravity made his journey less physically strenuous, but the further he walked, the more treacherous the terrain became. He had traveled nearly six kilometers in an hour, and was reluctant to go much further from camp and leave Nyota even more vulnerable, but he noted the appearance of several varieties of grasses and trees ahead to his left. They needed food and could not afford for him to be so overprotective of her, so he turned away from the water to begin scaling a series of low boulders to investigate the plants.

His initial scans were disappointing, but he soon found several edible plant species, including a bitter flowering plant and another vining plant that produced tart, red berries. The most notable discovery came in the form of a tuberous root rich in retinol, ascorbic acid, tocopherols, and folate, as well as many of the essential dietary minerals – magnesium, iron, zinc, and phosphorous, as well as a staggering amount of sulfur. The rough, brown roots contained high levels of oxalic acid, but that could easily be removed by boiling them. They were abundant in the area, so he pulled the waterproof bag from the stuff sack on his back and began to till through the soil with the back of the hatchet.

After he collected several pounds of the roots, he prepared to return to camp when his sensitive ears detected movement from overhead. He rose to his feet with slow, deliberate movements and surveyed the ridge ten meters above his head through a patchwork of foliage. _There were voices_.

They were male and spoke in a fast-paced, nasal, and breathy language, and the more he heard, the more convinced he became it was Orion. It was tempting to immediately make his presence known and explain his grim situation, but he had known too many Orions to find this a suitable course of action, at least not without observing them from a distance first.

The majority of Orion males who left their home world did so for one of two reasons – smuggling or piracy. Or both. He also considered the fact that they were trekking through a cold marsh on a remote moon in a system occupied by an isolationist race, and decided it would be logical to remain silent. He tucked himself under the branches of the closest tree and scanned the top of the rock face.

He heard a communicator chime and a high-pitched voice respond. _They had communications._

He silenced the tricorder and flipped through the programs to locate the universal translator, but they were too far away for it to engage. He still couldn't see them, but that was not a guarantee that they couldn't see _him_. He thought of Nyota and wondered if they could see the pod from their vantage point. He programmed the tricorder to record audio and held it high over his head for several minutes until he heard them move off, and then amplified the recording and fed it back through the tricorder's translator. As he skimmed the content of their conversation, he his tightening grip on the handheld device threaten to break it.

 _We know the vessel crashed in this area._

 _But "this area" is a search radius of more than 10,000 square kilometers. We will never find them on foot._

 _We sent out additional patrols to assist you._

 _If you could just turn off the shield barrier for a few moments, we could find them on sensors and-_

 _That is out of the question. Using this narrow frequency is dangerous enough. We can't risk another Starfleet patrol vessel sniffing around. We lost the whole crop last season when the Kantare came through here. The Syndicate wants their product_ _– not excuses. Keep looking._

 _What if they aren't Starfleet?_

 _I don't care. Find them and kill them, whoever they are._


	6. The Swamp

It was tempting to abandon logic and race back to camp, but Spock calmly powered down the tricorder, piled the food and supplies into the stuff sack, grabbed the hatchet, and proceeded at a tactical jog down the slick boulders. He paused every so often to listen for movement or other activity but heard none. He was less than a kilometer away from the pod when he heard the screams of energy bursts and shouting.

He tightened his grip on the hatchet and took off at a sprint in the direction of the noise, bounding over fallen trees and large rocks while scanning the bleak horizon. The pod came into view but he couldn't see Nyota. There was black smoke mixed in with small wisps of the foggy mist, and in a moment of inattention, he tripped over a large object.

 _A body._

He pushed himself up on his hands, realizing his feet were tangled with the legs of a slender Orion man.

"Nyota?" As soon as her name escaped his lips, he saw her standing on the other side of the pod, a phaser in her right hand at the low ready and her left hand on her belly.

"Spock, over here," she hissed.

She ducked behind the pod and soon he heard the sound of scraping metal and automated clicking.

He checked the Orion for life signs and found none. From the other side of the pod, he saw the legs of another lifeless figure beginning to flop around. He staggered around the pod to find Nyota trying to flip another unconscious Orion man onto his back.

"Nyota, we have to leave."

" _No_ , not yet. Spock, they have _comms_ ," she muttered. " _Help me_!"

Spock grabbed the man by his shoulder and easily put him on his back so Nyota could dig into his breast pocket. She uncovered uncovered a large communication device and thumbed through its screens. Spock hadn't been able to visually identify the people at the top of the rock face, so he couldn't be certain if they were the same individuals. The message spoke of sending additional patrols, so it was possible they belonged to a different search party.

"What has happened?" he asked.

"We can talk about it later, but I'm pretty sure more of them are coming," she exclaimed. "I was right about the dampening field. If I can isolate the frequency they're using for local communications, I can send a distress signal on it."

 _Logical_.

"Is the communications array already set up?" he asked, slinging the stuff sack over his shoulder to hastily pack additional supplies.

"Yes, I just finished setting it up and crawled into the pod to rest for a minute when I heard them coming," she explained. " _Got it_!"

She waddled to the computer to input data and seconds later, Spock saw a green light flash on the side of the transceiver and a huge grin break across her face. "We did it!"

"I believe it is more correct to say that _you_ did it," he said, looking at the bodies of the two Orions as he shoved the remaining bottles of water into the stuff sack.

"Yeah, thanks for leaving the phaser, by the way," she replied. "I don't suppose you found any good places to hole up on your little tour?"

"No," he admitted, grabbing one of the waterproof bags.

She nodded and squatted awkwardly to rummage through the pockets of the Orion he'd tripped over. "I don't think they were able to call in the location of the pod, but now that we're transmitting, that's bound to draw a lot of unwanted attention."

"Agreed." He pulled the ratchet straps over the stuff sack to tie the medical kit, and waterproof bags to the top and make an improvised rucksack.

Nyota busied herself with trying to fold the poncho and blankets as tightly as she could to fit into the last remaining waterproof bag, but it was evident they were going to have to sacrifice a lot of essential equipment for mobility.

"The transceiver stopped transmitting," she whispered.

They exchanged a careful look. The Orions had caught on to their transmission and rotated the frequency, which also probably meant they had zeroed in on their precise location.

"I believe we have packed all we can and that it would be wise to leave now," Spock urged, pulling the stuff sack onto his back.

Nyota furrowed her brow as she arched her back and considered their surroundings. She had packed some of the lighter items and blankets into his personal bag and Spock bent to pick it up.

"I've got it," she declared, grabbing at one of the straps.

Spock tested the weight of the bag, judging it to be between six and seven kilograms. He disliked having her carry anything at all and would have gladly lashed it onto the top of his own hastily made rucksack, but the look on her face told him she was determined to feel useful and now was not the time to engage in another argument with her over her physical condition. He helped put it on her back, tightening the straps to fit it higher up on her shoulders to avoid putting further strain on her lower back.

If the Orions had a dampening field that was interfering with communications and sensors, they wouldn't be able to find them using technological methods, but the soggy soil gave their adversaries a far more ancient means of tracking them.

The ground around their camp was destroyed from their footprints, and Spock could see trails leading in and out of camp, one set of tracks in the direction he'd taken earlier in his search for food, and two sets of footprints coming into camp from the dead Orions. That left two obvious ways to conceal their course – move quickly in an unpredictable path and double back frequently to confuse the trail or move through the waters of the nearby swamp.

Given Nyota wasn't capable of speedy travel and they knew the swamp was infested with carnivorous animals, both options were unacceptable. They would simply have to hike and hope for the best. Since he'd used the orange engineering tape to mark his path in one direction, they stepped off on a new bearing, following the water down a gentle slope deeper into the swamp.

"I think they have some kind of illegal plantation," she whispered. "I heard them talking to each other when I was inside the pod, and I'm pretty sure they said something about delivering a crop to someone. It's been a few years since I've had any practice with the Orion language."

"I believe they were talking about the Orion Syndicate," he said.

"Well they _are_ Orions," she retorted, allowing her voice to crack with quiet sarcasm. "It's not really _that_ crazy when you think about it."

He finished relating the details of the conversation he'd overheard and translated and they compared notes, and though Nyota offered a lot of speculation, he was able to draw a number of conclusions. The moon on which they'd crash-landed was the base of some kind of sizeable, illegal Orion operation and though the Orions were willing to kill to maintain its secrecy, they weren't desperate enough to turn off the shield barrier they'd constructed around the moon to find them. _Yet_.

If they did that, they would easily be able to identify their biosigns on sensors, and he and Nyota would be completely exposed. Despite having transmitted a short distress signal, the shield barrier continued to pose a problem, given that its obvious intended purpose was to help the Orions avoid detection from vessels in orbit. It was entirely possible, _likely_ even, that someone could pick up their distress signal, come to investigate, scan the planet, and find no biosigns. All they could do was continue to attempt to evade detection, and the deep tracks they were leaving weren't helping matters.

Nyota stopped suddenly to adjust the bag on her back, and Spock offered her one of the bottles of water and after hearing her stomach rumble a low growl, he presented her with the last of their rations.

"No." Her soft voice carried notes of anguish and determination, and Spock was about to insist when she pushed his hand away and said, "I can wait a little while. Let's keep walking."

The problem of their tracks was solved twenty minutes later when lightning cracked across the sky, signaling the commencement of a heavy downpour. She donned the poncho and they continued to walk. Nyota stayed several steps ahead, which allowed her to set a pace she was comfortable with, and Spock kept the phaser at the ready, tuning his ears to the sounds of the swamp.

She moved with an energetic purpose for nearly an hour, but the muddier the ground grew, the most exhausting the trek became, and Nyota was soon reduced to a laboring, awkward shuffle.

The rain began to ease and visibility increased, allowing Spock to see a shift in the terrain about a kilometer ahead. They were approaching the edge of the swamp and would soon find themselves in hilly, rocky territory covered with scrub brush.

"Perhaps you should take a moment to rest," he urged, placing his hand on her waist.

"No!" she snapped. "We have to keep going, we have-"

Her words were cut off by a gurgling noise rising from low in her throat. She whirled around, took several more steps forward and tripped over a rotting branch. He managed to keep her from pitching forward into the mud by grabbing the straps of the bag on her back, and that was when her tears began to fall.

He pulled her close and held her, sliding his right hand over the crest of her cheek to meld their minds together. She wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing the bulk of her stomach into him and sobbed violently for nearly a minute.

"I hate- I hate that- that I'm- slowing us down," she cried, her voice muffled by his wet shirt.

" _You are doing everything you can under unusually difficult circumstances_ ," he replied telepathically, gripping her face more tightly.

Through their linked minds, she responded, " _I'm scared, Spock_."

" _It is understandable_."

Something about his statement made her cry harder, and it taxed his mental discipline to balance her emotions. Spock had never felt so powerless. Her body was strained to the limit and her thoughts were a jumble of terror and irritation. They were hungry, tired, and running for their lives, and there was nothing he could do to alleviate her fear and discomfort.

She pulled away suddenly and said, "We have to keep going."

"It will be dark soon," he said, noting the fading light and falling temperature. "I would not prefer to travel in the dark – we need to establish a camp before nightfall."

"We also need to get out of this stinking swamp," she seethed, pushing forward toward the stony, black terrain.

It took another hour to trudge the short kilometer out of the swampy lowlands, and once they reached the rocky hills, it was almost completely dark. They found several large boulders that would be suitable for providing concealment, and Spock worked quickly to tie the tarp over their heads and camouflage it with nearby brush.

His body began to shiver in his wet clothing as he tied the last of the parachute cord through the remaining grommet on the tarp. He slumped down next to Nyota, realizing she was shaking uncontrollably despite being buried under both the blankets she had carried from the pod. _She was so cold_.

Making a fire was out of the question: even if he could find a dry source of fuel, the light and smoke would instantly give away their position. Then a fleeting memory twirled through his mind, and he reached for the stuff sack, freed the medical kit from the straps, and examined it. _It was made of duranium._

Hulls of starships and shuttlepods were made of duranium alloys to withstand phaser fire. He emptied it the case and set it on the ground near their feet, took aim with the phaser and fired, and soon the duranium medical kit began to glow, giving off an incredible amount of heat.

Nyota rested her head on his shoulder and offered a weak smile. "I remember that old trick."

He had done this once before, during a failed training mission when Nyota was a cadet. They had been attacked by Nausicaan pirates and stranded on a planetoid near the Briar Patch, and firing upon the duranium case of a synchronic meter had helped them survive the harsh climate.

"I didn't really think a whole lot of you a whole lot back then," Nyota reminisced. "You were just strict, boring Commander Spock. But you grew on me."

She looked down to her swollen belly, made a face, and added, " _Literally_."

He reached into the stuff sack and offered her the rations for a second time. She took the package and considered it at length before tearing away a corner.

"Here," she said, breaking one of the bars in half to give to him.

"Keep it," he replied. "You have greater nutritional needs than I do."

"Spock-"

"That is all that is left, Nyota. The root vegetables I collected earlier possess a high level of oxalic acid and cannot be eaten raw. As the duranium case is too hot and too small to functionally cook upon, we have no means of preparing them."

"So you're just going to starve yourself?" she retorted.

"I did not say that," he argued. "I merely said that I am not capable of safely cooking the roots I found this morning under our present circumstances."

"Please take it," she begged.

"I have no intention of taking food from you."

She looked away, tucked her quivering chin to her chest, and took several deep breaths. The decision was logical enough for him, but he readily understood her conflict – to give to her mate, she would have to take from their child. She took a reluctant bite of the protein bar, and Spock ran his fingers down her wrist to hold her free hand.

"Your hands are like ice," she said, crushing the hard food between her molars.

He stood and wrung out his shirt, then reached into the stuff sack for a dry set of clothes. They were the ones he'd put on Nyota when they first landed and still had bits of mud stuck to the cloth fibers, but they were dry, and staying dry would be essential to staving off hypothermia.

He pulled the shirt over his head, draped it on the edge of the tarp, and then sat to remove his boots and trousers. He stood, naked and shivering and pulled on a dry set of underwear. He heard a soft snort behind him and he could see Nyota sporting a wide grin by the radiant glow of the duranium case.

"You are amused. Why?"

"You're so _pale_ ," she explained, leaning her head against the boulder to snicker. "But after everything that's happened, I'm still attracted to you."

He had been telling her the same thing for months as she'd started to agonize over the changes in her body, and yet she'd refused to believe him. He pulled the underwear around his waist and began to put on the stiff trousers.

"Of course, being attracted to you is how _this_ happened," she added, probing her stomach with her index finger.

"I recall," he replied. "I was there also."

She laughed louder but managed to stifle the noise by slapping a hand over her mouth.

"And I was equally drawn to you, Nyota," he added, unrolling the sleeves of the sweater before sitting down next to her to put on his socks and boots.

For a while, the only sound came from her dogged crunching on the emergency rations, and when she finished eating, they sat in silence. The pod hadn't been comfortable, but it had been much better than sleeping out in the elements. He shifted position to allow Nyota to lean her back against his chest for better support, and she quickly fell into restless sleep. His breathing naturally slowed and he began to lightly meditate, keeping his ears alert for unusual sounds.

A short time later, Nyota left to relieve herself. When he attempted to follow her, she rolled her eyes, grabbed the phaser, and begged him to stop being so overprotective.

She left their camp and darted out of view behind a thick patch of dead shrubbery fifteen meters away, and Spock stood and crossed his arms, shivering against the cold to wait for her return. One minute turned into two, and then three, and Spock was about to check on her when he heard the sound of twigs snapping behind him.

He turned to see the faint outlines of three Orions in the darkness, each with a hand phaser pointed in his direction.


	7. The Emergency

He slowly uncrossed his arms and considered each in turn, weighing the possibilities of escape or self-defense. Three Orions with ranged energy weapons against one unarmed Vulcan was far from an ideal situation.

Yet they did not fire. The Orions had orders to kill them as far as Spock knew, so why hadn't they killed him already? As a Starfleet officer, Spock understood orders often changed, but the Orions seemed fearful in their hesitation.

One of them spoke an unintelligible string of words, but Spock remained motionless, neither holding his hands up in surrender nor moving forward to attack. _Where was Nyota_?

Then her voice cracked through the darkness, transforming the generally melodic and breathy Orion language into a sharp bark. One of the Orions responded, his voice growing into a snarl. They raised their weapons and inched forward.

She had the phaser and the benefit of concealment in the dark, but unfortunately she and Spock comprised a disjointed fighting force. Logic dictated that in close quarters, two people were only better than one if they had the opportunity to work together as a single unit and were trained to do so. Though he and Nyota were practiced in combat drills, this was a unique and unfortunate situation. They were outnumbered and separated – she was armed and Spock was not, and he would be caught in the crossfire if the Orions attempted to engage them.

Without the benefit of training for such a scenario, all that remained was logic. It was a documented phenomenon that people engaged targets in an order based on the written text of their primary language. Nyota knew many languages, but her dominant languages all wrote left to right, therefore it was logical to assume that if she fired, she would begin with the Orion on the left.

Just as he started to shift his body to move to the right, the Orion in the center made a move. A blast of green light erupted from his weapon, aimed low and far to the left. Spock dodged to the right just as a lower energy burst of red shot over his shoulder. Spock was upon the Orion on the right in less than a second, pushing down on the bundle of nerves at the intersection between his neck and shoulder.

The central Orion wheeled around and Spock caught him with an elbow to the face just as the Orion sunk his fist into Spock's gut. The expected blow sent his diaphragm into spasms and for a moment, Spock couldn't breathe and staggered to remain on his feet. Another flash of red light ripped over his shoulder, coming close enough to push an enormous swell of disorienting light and heat across his face.

He froze. He was temporarily blind from the phaser burst but trained his sensitive ears against the sounds of the dark.

" _Spock_? Spock, are you ok?" Nyota whispered.

He turned and nearly tripped over the body of one of the Orions on the ground. He held out his hands and shuffled in her direction. He sensed her just moments before her hand slid across his face and he brought his own hands up to her face to meld their minds together.

" _Are you injured_?" he asked telepathically, shutting his useless eyes against the dark to focus better on her mind.

"No," she replied aloud. "Are you?"

He reopened his eyes and realized he could just make out her face through a haze of pulsing, foggy white light. He let go of her face and took several slow breaths. "Not permanently, no."

She waddled past him, stooping low to the ground to investigate the bodies of the three Orions. He followed her lead, and as his senses came back into focus, he realized Nyota had killed the two she'd shot with the phaser. Like the others back at the camp, their deaths were regrettable. Killing when one did not need to kill was immoral, and yet, he was not disappointed with Nyota for electing to end their lives. It was a matter of practicality.

Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been appropriate to simply stun them, but their present situation was far from ordinary. They could not imprison or detain the Orions and allowing them to live posed a significant threat to their survival. That left the problem of the Orion that he'd neutralized with a nerve pinch.

The man did not currently present an immediate danger; killing him now when he lacked the means to defend himself would be immoral. Yet the man had been willing to kill them and had put himself in his current predicament, and the further Spock considered the logical and moral paradigm, the more convinced he became there was no appropriate resolution.

If they allowed him to live he would regain consciousness in several hours and likely inform his superiors about what had happened. Yet what had happened would be evident if they left the bodies where they were. If they left him he could still die from exposure to the elements or from a curious predator, which would be a needlessly painful death.

While he dwelled on his moral conflict, he helped turn the bodies over while she searched through their pockets for useful supplies. One of the Orions carried a practical rucksack full of food, water, and water resistant thermal clothing, and Spock quickly rearranged his makeshift pack to start loading their supplies into the Orion's bag.

Nyota found two more communicators and studied them carefully as Spock finished tying down the gear to the sturdy rucksack. They would need to leave and seek a more concealed shelter, but it was obvious Nyota wouldn't be able to travel far.

He studied the landscape and the Orions' tracks leading out of the swamp. It would be logical to keep to the rocky territory and head in the direction of the low valley to the right. It would be grueling trek over difficult terrain, and he stopped, turning to consider Nyota.

She was sitting on the ground with both communicators open, thumbing a set of manual keys to create a symphony of duotronic beeping. Suddenly her body shuddered and she clutched both forearms over her midsection and grunted.

"Nyota?"

She gasped and bellowed a low, whistling hiss. "I'm… _fine_."

She'd been experiencing false contractions for weeks, but never anything that had rendered her unable to speak before. He loaded the heavy rucksack on his back and approached her. She breathed angrily and went back to examining the communicators, but he could see by the red, ambient glow of the devices that her hands were shaking.

"Nyota, we need to leave."

"I- I _know_ ," she rasped. "I found-"

She was interrupted by what appeared to be a completely involuntary groan escaping from low in her throat. " _Nyota_?"

"We're- _transmitting_ -" she panted. "Not a strong signal- without- an _array_ , but- _argh_!"

She took several deep breaths, rocking back and forth, but approximately thirty seconds later she seemed to experience some kind of intense relief. He looked down at the communicators on the ground, nodded, and helped her to her feet.

She took one look at his face and said, "I'm fine. Let's go."

They left the communicators on the ground, picked up the high energy Orion phasers, and headed down a narrow, rocky path. It would have been difficult terrain to negotiate in daylight without carrying excess loads, so their current circumstances made the journey painfully slow going.

They had traveled less than a hundred meters when Nyota stifled a scream and seized her belly again. Spock caught her from behind and attempted to meld their minds together, but she pushed his hands away, insisting, "We- have to- keep… going."

They traveled further down into the valley, pausing every so often to listen for the sounds of approaching threats. Nyota seemed to be in the process of separating her body from her mind, but the further they walked, the more it became clear she was cycling through bouts of crippling pain. She continued to assert she was fine – he'd explained numerous times that the word "fine" was relative and had numerous definitions – but he suspected she was beginning to labor.

When they made it to the valley floor an hour later, it was apparent she could not continue. He put his hand on her back to urge her to stop, but she twisted her body away and staggered forward for several more steps before tripping over a large, loose rock.

She went down on all fours and Spock rushed to help her, shrugging the hefty rucksack from his back to fall to his knees beside her. Her mouth was open in shock and the rest of her face was contorted into an expression of fear and agony. "Nyota, we have to stop."

"But we- we- can't," she breathed. "I'm so- so- I-"

Her grabbed her under her arms and pulled her to his chest, wrapping his arms around her from behind. She rested her cheek against his chest and gurgled, "I'm so sorry. I'm slowing… us… down."

"As I have said on many occasions, there is nothing for which to apologize."

He glanced around. The location was not ideal, but there was an outcropping of flat boulders two hundred meters ahead. That would have to do. She could not continue to walk and he had no means to safely and effectively carry her for any considerable distance.

"Can you stand?" he asked, helping her sit up on her knees.

Her jaw was clenched in stony defiance and her fists were balled into knots, but she nodded furiously. Spock took her by the hands and pulled her to her feet, and together they shuffled as one slow, deliberate unit into the relative obscurity of the rock formation ahead. Three-quarters of the way to their intended destination, her body seized and a soft yelp bolted from her lips.

He caught her under her right arm but she seemed determined to sink to her knees. The first tears cut down her face and Spock quickly wiped them away, brushing a stray tendril of hair behind her ear.

Through her staggered breaths she continued to apologize, and when her body slackened again, Spock draped her arm over his shoulder, weaved his left arm under the backs of her knees and carried her the rest of the way. She didn't protest, and that was worrisome.

He hobbled the remaining fifty meters to a tiny, cave-like indentation cut between two sharp rocks. He gently set her on her feet while he used the red lens flashlight on the Orion's phaser to scan the area for wildlife. She moaned and started a series of deep, long breaths as he helped lower her to a sitting position.

Spock sprinted back to the rucksack and returned less than a minute later to find her shaking. He set to work pulling the supplies from the bag, first swaddling her in one of the pod's blankets and then heating the duranium case. She continued to shiver.

Spock sensed he should be cold, but watching Nyota in so much pain and distress occupied the whole of his mind. He slid her forward and took a seat behind her to provide her a more comfortable place on which to rest her back. She bowed her head forward and laid her forehead on her knees as she started another series of dogged pants that devolved into a quiet scream.

Spock trailed his thumbs along the neural nodes in her spine in an attempt to provide any pain relief he could, but the moment he touched her lower back, she jerked and sent an elbow hard into his ribs. His breath caught in his chest as he took the blow and felt a sharp pain course up through his armpit.

"I'm- I'm sorry," she gasped. " _It hurts_."

Spock was almost certain she was in labor, but was uncertain how far she'd progressed. He knew how much she was hurting, but she was being quite loud and there was no means of determining how many more Orions were in the area. He grabbed both of her cheeks, melding their minds in an attempt to share some of her pain. _There was so much intense pain_.

And then moments later, it quickly faded until it was just a dull memory. Spock released his hold on her face and resumed his efforts at neuropressure.

"I'm so thankful for you," she mumbled, her voice quivering.

"I know," he replied. "I am grateful for everything that you are."

She uttered a choking cough and repositioned her forehead on her knees. "Someone once told me that being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, and loving someone deeply gives you courage."

"A curious maxim," he admitted, believing she was attempting to engage in dialogue to relieve her mind of her fear.

"I love you both, but I'm so scared," she whispered, massaging the sides of her belly with her fingertips.

"I understand."

"I didn't want it to end like this," she groaned.

"It is not over," he reminded.

"No, I mean I wanted to make the best of my last weeks of being a pregnant mess. I know I've been so emotional and awful to you, but feeling her inside of me – not just her moving, but her _mind_ and who she is as a person – I am going to miss that part of her life so much. But I was more excited to hold her in my arms and-"

She faltered. At first Spock assumed she was taking a moment to collect herself from her anguish, but he felt a wet feeling spreading down the backs of his thighs.

" _No no no no no_ ," she hissed. "Please no."

Spock knew little of pregnancy and childbirth, but he knew enough to assume her amniotic sac had ruptured. He had suspected she was in the earliest stages of labor before, but now he was certain.

"I can't have my baby here, Spock," she stammered. "I can't have our baby here. Not like this. I _can't_."

"I am not certain you have a choice," he replied.

"I'm so scared, Spock," she whimpered. " _Please_."

Fear was illogical, but even the most disciplined Vulcans had occasional logical lapses.


	8. The Relief

"Do you remember when you took me to Florida for my birthday?" Nyota mumbled.

"Certainly." That had been the night he realized he was developing a deep affection for her that went beyond generalized attraction.

"We stared- up at the stars and you told me-" she shivered uncontrollably and he held her tighter, sensing another contraction was coming. "You told me about Vulcan… constellations."

A quiet scream began a slow departure from her lips and Spock did as he had already done forty-one times before and gripped her face and felt a devastating rush of pain course through her. She began a series of shallow pants and his fingers became wet from her tears. Thirty seconds later it was over and her body slackened and slumped against his chest.

"What gave you cause to recall such a memory?"

"You said we were in the 37 Geminorum system. That's part of the Gemini constellation."

"Yes."

"The mythology is so interesting. The Romans stole it from the Greeks," she whispered. "Castor and Pollux…"

Spock remembered the story well, but wished to keep her conscious and talking. She seemed to be growing so weak and had already vomited from labor pains twice. "Remind me."

"You didn't forget," she mumbled, allowing a wan smile to streak her face. "You don't forget _anything_."

"I wish to hear the story again."

"Castor and Pollux were twin half brothers born from a mortal woman. One was the son of the King of Sparta, and the other was the son of Zeus. They became famous Argonauts – explorers on a quest to find the Golden Fleece." Her voice trailed off and she craned her neck to look up at the night sky.

Spock pressed the knuckle of his index finger into the neural node at the base of her skull and she moaned and drew in a deep breath through her teeth. "I do not believe the story ends there."

"Then Castor was killed, and his brother Pollux asked Zeus to make him immortal too, and together they became the constellation Gemini."

He recalled lying with her on a warm sandy beach six years ago, talking at length about the ancient myths and legends of Earth and Vulcan. Where Vulcan had only several collections of stories about the stars and planets, Earth had _hundreds_ due to the incredible diversity of its people.

Almost all of Earth's earliest cultures had their own tales about the stars – the Babylonians, Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, Incans, Romans, Vikings, and so many others. She had always been fascinated by the lesser-known myths, those of the Native Americans and the indigenous peoples of the African and Australian continents.

Spock put his hand on her chest and realized her breathing had slowed. "Nyota?"

"Castor and Pollux… they're considered guardians of sailors in the ancient myths."

"I did not know that."

"Sailors associated them with a weather phenomenon called St. Elmo's fire. It normally showed up near the end of big lightning storms."

Spock was familiar with the Terran common name for the occurrence of a luminous coronal discharge on tapered objects during electrical storms. Vulcans called it dukal-igen-wesh – literally _ball lightning_. "Explain."

"It's just a plasma discharge," she slurred. "But ancient sailors didn't know about ionized gases and electrical fields."

"I wish to know more."

"You're the ship's science officer. If I have to give you a lesson on simple weather phenomena we're… in… _trouble_." She gasped and clutched her belly again.

For the forty-third time, he melded their minds and shared the experience with her. Her pains were growing worse and more frequent, and it seemed logical to conclude her labor was progressing, but he lacked the knowledge to say when she would be ready to deliver.

She started to scream. He held his breath, trying to draw more of her agony away but it seemed to have little effect so he slid his hand over her mouth to stifle her long shriek. He disliked having to quiet her, sensing she would prefer to endure this without any restraint, but he was forced to weigh her suffering against their safety.

Sharp pain ripped through his fingers, causing him to pull his hand away. He was bleeding. Her teeth had torn straight through the flesh of his middle finger, exposing the bone of the central knuckle. As her contraction started to subside and she became aware of the taste of his blood on her tongue, she retched once again into the waterproof bag he'd given her earlier.

"I'm so- so sorry," she wailed. " _I'm so sorry_."

He cradled his injured hand and offered her one of the bottles of water to rinse her mouth. "I know this is difficult for you."

She swilled the water around in her mouth and spit it into the bag. "How can you be so calm?"

Her voice was a low growl, raw and accusatory. It was taxing every fiber of his being to remain composed and logical, and he sensed that admitting this to her would only cause her to panic further.

"Ugh, I'm sorry," she moaned. "You've been nothing but amazing to me and I- I just-"

"You are performing admirably under the circumstances."

She rested the back of her head on his chest and sniffed. "Women used to die in childbirth."

Spock knew this. Evolutionary biologists called it the obstetrical dilemma. The prevailing theory stipulated that the pelvis of all bipedal sentient species was the direct consequence of two opposing evolutionary pressures. The ability to walk upright demanded a narrower pelvis and thus the size of the bony birth canal had decreased. Unfortunately the development of larger craniums necessitated a wider pelvic area to accommodate infants, and thus, the problem.

Prior to early advances in medical technology, many Vulcan females died in childbirth at rates that dwarfed human maternal fatalities when other factors such as disease and malnutrition were controlled for. Before the first series of reformations several millennia ago, death in childbirth was a minor contributor in a gender imbalance that forced many Vulcan males to fight for their mates.

Vulcan infants had bigger midbrains and thicker skulls than their human counterparts, making their heads larger and less pliable and therefore more likely to become lodged in the birth canal. Nyota was carrying his child, a child with Vulcan genes. Dr. McCoy had discussed the possibility that she would have to deliver by surgical means if the child grew too large, but no one had questioned modern medicine's ability to get both Nyota and their child safely through the process of birth.

Spock thought of their descent to the remote moon and the dwindling oxygen in the pod, the scaly carnivores in the swamp, his search for food, and their fight to stay dry and warm and evade the Orions. They had all been cautionary tales about the inherent hubris technology afforded advanced societies, and now he was reminded of it again.

For all their language, culture, technology, and social wisdom, he, Nyota, and everyone else were still fundamentally just animals caught in the classical struggle for scarce resources. Their situation put them back in the position of their distant ancestors – they were no longer protected from things like starving or freezing to death, and nor was Nyota exempt from the dangers of childbirth. It was logical to accept this.

Logic taught him to separate irrational worry from reality and suppress it – either she would die or she would not and there was little he could do to affect the outcome. But now that he held her in her arms and was present in the experience, his logic was failing. Nyota was his _mate_. She was carrying their child. Spock had always believed that all emotions were capable of mastery, but now he was less certain.

"I don't want to die, Spock," she whispered.

Nor did he. A long and prosperous life was the obvious desirable goal for any species. The odds were impossible to calculate with great precision, but even if the child was safely delivered from her, their collective chances of long-term survival were quite poor between the dangers of the natural environment and the Orions.

Logic required they should accept that inevitable truth, but hope demanded they should focus on the unlikely possibility of success. Many great Vulcans had taught him the value of logic, but many great humans had taught him the necessity of hope. His mother, Captain Pike, Dr. McCoy, Jim… Yet no one had done more to teach him the importance of hope than the woman lying slack in his arms, who was on the verge of breaking from her physical and emotional anguish.

There was a disconnect between what he knew and what she needed to hear, and given her present condition, he chose to defer to her. He bent forward to whisper in her ear, "I am confident that you will do what you have always done: _persevere_."

Another contraction began and he helped her through it, careful to keep his fingers away from her mouth. When her body relaxed, she sighed and looked up at the sky again. "The stars… nothing looks familiar here."

Spock followed her gaze and stared at a myriad of familiar stars made unrecognizable by his relative location on a remote moon. He focused his eyes and recalled well-studied star charts, did several quick adjustments in his head, and eventually found a frame of reference. "I believe that is li'rah, the star humans call Vega."

" _Li'rah_? That's weird," she muttered. "Vega is part of a constellation the ancient Greeks called Lyra."

"Who was Lyra?"

" _What_ , not who," she replied. "Lyra represents the lyre of Orpheus."

"The musician who lost his mate to the god of the underworld?"

Nyota stiffened and slowly nodded. "Something like that."

She remained quiet for nearly a minute before she asked, "What was li'rah to the ancient Vulcans?"

"The bringer of life," he replied. "It could only be seen during the spring months and signaled an end to the worst of the winter's electrical storms. When it became visible in the southern sky, ancient Vulcans took it as a sign to begin planting crops."

"Interesting," Nyota said, her voice holding a hopeful tone for the first time in days. "In Kenya you can't even see it until the darkest part of the night in early summer. Some of the tribal cultures would look to the northern sky and see Vega as a beacon for the migratory animals. It would appear just after the rainy season and soon after that, the Maasai Mara would be covered with millions of zebra and wildebeest."

Her body shuddered and just as Spock braced himself to help her through another contraction, he heard the sound of sliding rocks from overhead. His eyes shot upward and found the forms of nine Orions standing on a rock face fifteen meters above them.

For a fraction of a second he felt a wave of peace, but his mind was still quick to react. He reached across his body for the phaser, moving while turning Nyota toward the rock he was leaning against to shield her from their weapons fire when he found himself awash in unanticipated warmth and overwhelming light.

His existence no longer made logical sense. His eyes were adjusted to the dark so the blinding light flooding his senses momentarily disoriented him. There was shouting and his ears were ringing from a piercing siren in the distance. His arm instinctively rose to shield them from oncoming attack, but in the next instant, he realized hope had not been in vain after all.

They were back on _Enterprise_ and seated on the transporter pad in main engineering.

" _Ha ha_! Alricht then!"

" _Mr. Scott_?"

" _Mr. Spock_!"

The ship lurched and Spock's ears began to make sense of the loud siren and the yelling in the distance. They were at red alert. _The ship was under attack_.

The ship's chief engineer started to bark out orders. Nyota began to laugh through her wailing and Spock gripped her hand, trying to help her to an upright sitting position.

"No! Draw power awa' fae aft thrusters fur th' shields!" the engineer cried before turning back to Spock. "Is she ok?"

"She is in labor," Spock replied.

Mr. Scott's eyes grew wide and his mouth began to work at forming syllables.

"Initiate a site-to-site transport to sickbay," Spock ordered.

"Uh- _aye_ ," Scotty murmured.

"What is the ship's current status?" Spock asked, watching Scotty's fingers fly over the transporter's controls.

"We're under attack. The Orion Syndicate. It's _bad_."

"Explain."

"They launched a torpedo that hit deck 2 and depressurized the bridge above it!" he yelled.

"And the bridge crew?" Spock asked.

"Sickbay. Don't have a status."

As the _Enterprise_ hadn't yet received a new first officer, that left Mr. Scott, the ship's second officer, in command. He felt her hand grip his forearm and turned to see her staring at him intently. " _Go_."

It was the logical decision. Mr. Scott was overburdened and the most logical way for Spock to assist Nyota now was to ensure the safety of the ship. He nodded and started to rise to his feet but she pulled him into a deep, almost angry kiss.

" _Standby for transport_ ," Mr. Scott cried before turning around to Ensign Keenser to yell something unintelligible.

"Good luck," she croaked.

Rather than remind her that a belief in luck was illogical, he simply replied, "You too."

He stood back, stepped off the platform, and watched her disappear into the matter stream. She was on her own now. Rather than allow himself to continue to worry for her, he turned his attention commanding the ship from the emergency bridge Mr. Scott had established in main engineering.

An hour later, they finally stood down red alert and he took a seat on a toolbox by the door. Two Orion ships had been destroyed and three others had been seized with the help of the _USS Valiant_ and a small fleet of ships from the Kantare Civil Defense Patrol.

Information was still coming in, but it seemed the moon designated 37G-7D-27 that had been their home for the past two days had been a base of operations for an Orion black market narcotics plantation. Relations with the Kantare were exceptionally tenuous but the captain of the _Valiant_ was attempting to handle the situation.

Damage reports were coming in from all over the ship. The saucer section had taken severe external damage because the _Enterprise_ had been caught unawares by a small fleet of Orion frigates. It seemed the Orion Syndicate was now in possession of limited cloaking technology. Starfleet Command would certainly be displeased, given anti-piracy efforts continued to demand more personnel and resources with each passing year.

"Commander Spock, are you ok?"

He looked up to see Ensign M'Ress, the Caitian communications officer, standing over him holding a clean uniform and wearing a look of concern. She sniffed the air gingerly and looked at his clothes. He was filthy from two days of running through a swamp, not to mention covered in dried amniotic fluid.

He accepted the uniform and replied, "Yes, I am well. Thank you."

But there was still much to do. He had yet to receive an updated report from sickbay on the status of Nyota or the bridge crew. He reached up to toggle the switch on the wall to open an internal channel to medical when Ensign M'Ress said, "I'm glad we found you when you did. They had one hell of a dampening field. Is she- is she going to be ok?"

Spock looked at her feline face. Ensign M'Ress had served on _Enterprise_ less than a year and had struggled to perform her duties in the beginning, but Nyota had taken it upon herself to give M'Ress the necessary remedial training and she'd excelled ever since. He knew the young ensign admired Nyota, and realized he was not the only one waiting to hear about her status.

"I do not know," Spock admitted. "I need to get the report from sickbay, excuse me."

"Of course, sir."

He reached for the switch again, only to be interrupted by Mr. Scott. "We got deck 12 cleaned up, but I-"

"Mr. Scott, please excuse me," he interrupted.

Just before his fingers made contact with the switch, Dr. McCoy's voice drawled through the speaker. " _Sickbay to emergency bridge_."

" _Spock here_."

"I've got your final casualty report – zero dead, 43 injured. 2 critical, 5 serious, 17 fair, and 19 in good condition. That leaves us at 430 aboard."

Spock was about to ask about Nyota when the doctor added, "I have a correction. Total aboard is 431. Congratulations. It's a girl."


	9. The Addition

Nyota had no idea so many people could fit in sickbay. It seemed like half the damn ship was packed in there, which was unfortunate because she was naked below the waist and tucked in the far corner of the room with only a thin divider curtain for privacy. Hunger, exhaustion, terror, and pain had pushed her to limits she still couldn't comprehend, but none of that really mattered anymore.

The only thing that mattered was the tiny, squalling creature curled up on her chest. She was so little. And gooey. And beautiful. And loud. And _perfect_.

She had pointed little ears. _She had Spock's ears_. All the fear and agony and anguish dissolved into a tilt-o-whirl of emotions that continued to cycle back to a love so intense it threatened to consume her. As Nyota's trembling fingertips stroked her daughter's cheek for the first time, she burst into a bout of fresh tears.

She wanted to pull this beautiful being into a tight embrace and never let her go but was instantly terror-struck by the idea. The miniature person resting on her chest was so new and looked so fragile… _what if she hurt her_? She cried harder.

She was only vaguely aware of Christine draping a sheet over her waist and knees, but the moment the nurse reached for her baby, she panicked.

"I'm just going to get some measurements and run a few quick scans," Nurse Chapel insisted. "Just to make sure your little one is doing alright."

The rational side of Nyota's brain understood and accepted this – the baby was a few weeks early and had just been on one hell of an adventure – but all of her emotions and instincts vehemently rejected the idea. Before she could pull herself together enough to protest, Christine swept the baby into a dark blue blanket and set her down on the table behind Nyota's head.

Mother and daughter continued to cry and Nyota tried to sit up and turn to see what the nurse was doing. She was indistinctly aware of pain shooting through the lower half of her body but she didn't care. The communicator on Nurse Chapel's belt chirped. " _McCoy to Chapel_."

The nurse pulled the device from her waist and answered, "Chapel here."

" _Someone out front said they heard a baby crying. What's her status_?"

"Healthy baby girl. Some excess bleeding. I'm keeping my eye on it."

" _M'Benga's got surgery covered. I'm on my way. McCoy out_."

"She's really ok?" Nyota choked, noticing her baby's cries had turned into muffled grunts. "After the escape pod and the radiation- she's _really_ ok?"

"My initial scans show a very healthy baby," Christine replied, looking back at her with a reassuring smile. "And she's a long and lean little girl – 2.9 kilos and 58 centimeters long."

" _Is that good_?" Nyota sniffed. "Is that ok?"

"That's well within the normal range," the nurse replied. "Have you thought of a name?"

She'd thought of so many names but nothing had ever seemed right. Now her baby didn't have a name. What would people call her? Nyota's chin began to quiver. She was already failing at motherhood.

She heard the curtain on her right rustle and a voice drawl, "How we doin'?"

She recoiled at the sight of Dr. McCoy's disembodied head peeking through the two sheets of fabric and tried to close her legs and gasped from the pain. How bad _was_ it down there? She was afraid to even think about it.

"Lieutenant Uhura?" the doctor probed, pushing through the curtain and stepping over to the disinfecting sink to clean his hands. "You holding in there?"

Before she could answer, Christine put a hand on her forearm and said, "I'm going to get her cleaned up and warmed up, ok?"

"What? _No_." Her head whipped around to the nurse standing at her shoulder with a dark blue bundle cradled in her arm.

"I'll hurry. I promise," the nurse said. "Have a quick look."

Nyota balked and looked at the pudgy face protruding from the soft fabric. Her small eyes were dark and unfocused and her mouth seemed to be working out the dimensions of her little tongue. She had a patch of feathery black hair on her head and two faint, wispy eyebrows that trailed upward to her temples. _She looked so much like Spock_.

Her heart threatened to burst with love. Tears rimmed her eyes and she reached out and brushed her daughter's chin with her index finger. Where was Spock? Why wasn't he here?

 _Oh right_. He was busy commanding the ship in the middle of an attack. The rest of reality started flooding back in and she started to feel overwhelmed. She glanced around, noticing the red lights on the walls were no longer flashing. Had they stood down red alert? Were they safe?

"Oh my God; she's a tiny Spock," Dr. McCoy laughed, coming up behind Nurse Chapel to examine the baby in her arms. "A _Spockette_."

She snapped back into the moment and glared at him, feeling irrationally protective. "That's _not_ her name."

Then for reasons she couldn't explain, she started to cry again. " _I just want to hold her_."

"I'll bring her right back, I promise," Christine insisted.

" _Ok_ …" Nyota wailed, wondering if she was ever going to be emotionally stable again.

She craned her neck to watch Christine disappear behind the curtain with her baby and felt a devastating sense of helplessness and anxiety.

"Alright, Lieutenant," the Dr. McCoy murmured. "Mind if I take a look?"

She noticed he was pointing at her knees. She stared at him in horror. Just fifteen minutes earlier she'd been screaming her head off and in too much pain to put much stock in courtesy or modesty, but now that things had settled down, she suddenly felt very self-conscious.

Dr. McCoy had never done any physical exams on her, not because she had an issue with male doctors, but because they were _friends_. She realized he was a professional and had seen it all before, but she always insisted on maintaining a certain degree of mystery between them for both their sakes, _and_ Spock's.

"Does it have to be _you_?" she croaked.

"Sickbay's a little bit busy right now," he admitted. "And I don't want to scare you, but you're bleeding more than I'd like and you're still not out of the third stage of labor."

He began explaining all kinds of things about the placenta and trying to induce more contractions, but once he got to the word hemorrhage, she lie back down, closed her eyes, and mumbled, "Just make it quick."

He pulled a stool over to the foot of the biobed and said, "So what happened to you guys?"

"Dr. McCoy, I'd be happy to talk about it some other time when your hands aren't- _well_ … but for now maybe we could just not talk. This is weird."

"Say no more," he replied, ducking his head under the sheet.

She grimaced and tried to think of something else. Several seconds later he stood and pulled the sheet back over her legs. She allowed herself to open her eyes and noticed his brow was tightly furrowed. He moved back to the disinfecting sink without saying a word.

"Am I ok?"

"We're going to get you taken care of," he answered, whirling back around and pulling the hypospray from his front pocket. "Nothing to worry about."

Dr. McCoy was good at a lot of things, but hiding his emotions certainly wasn't one of them. He quickly gave her a shot in the neck of something that felt warm and her hand instinctively started rubbing the injection site. Her mind was too full of too many problems to even know where to begin thinking.

 _Was she dying_? _Where was the baby_? _Where was Spock?_ _Was the ship on the verge of destruction_? _Were her friends dead_? More tears erupted from the corners of her eyes.

"Are you in pain right now?" the doctor asked, his voice teeming with concern.

"Is the ship- did anyone die?" she gasped.

"Everyone's going to be fine," he replied. "No fatalities. We've stood down red alert. We're all going to be fine."

"And Spock-" she whispered.

"He's on his way here," Dr. McCoy interrupted with a crooked, reassuring smile.

Nyota nodded, feeling unable to speak through her erratic emotions as fat tears continued to wind down her face.

"By the way, you made about half this ship very happy."

" _Huh_?" she choked.

"There was a pool going around. People were betting whether you'd have a boy or girl. Apparently Chekov owes Sulu some money."

She laughed through her tears but froze the moment she heard the curtains swishing. Nurse Chapel reappeared with the dark blue blanket and Nyota's heart surged. She scrambled to sit up on her elbows and craned her neck to see her daughter.

"You ready to hold her?" Christine asked.

She flashed a broad, tearful smile and held out her arms when suddenly, she was hit by another agonizing cramp in her belly, worse than any of her labor contractions. She slammed her eyes shut and uttered a soft screamed. She got the sense that Dr. McCoy and Nurse Chapel were talking to her and that someone was massaging her abdomen, but the pain too unbearable to process anything. As it finally subsided and she started trying to catch her breath, the doctor said, "We need to get her to surgery."

"Ok, doctor," Nurse Chapel replied.

Nyota's blood ran cold. " _Why_? What's wrong?"

"It's a pretty common complication in interspecies pregnancies," Dr. McCoy started to explain. "The difference in physiologies can sometimes cause irregularities with the placenta. Normally the body can expel it without a problem, but it seems to have burrowed in there pretty good this time around."

"Am I going to die?" she rasped.

"If we don't do anything, _yes_ ," he admitted. "But do you really think I'd let that happen? Besides, I don't even want to think about what Spock would do to me if I let you die."

She had a feeling he was making a joke but she couldn't wrap her mind around it enough to think it was funny. He pulled out his communicator and started barking orders to someone and she twisted her neck to gape at Christine for an explanation.

"It's a pretty routine procedure," the nurse reassured.

"Can I hold her now? _Please_? I haven't gotten to hold her," Nyota said, feeling the eclectic bundle of emotions push her fear aside.

"You don't have to ask," Christine smiled, taking a step forward. "She's _yours_."

The moment the soft blanket touched her arms, Nyota's tears evaporated. She didn't even bother trying to understand the powerful feelings coursing through her; she just stared at the little baby – _her_ baby – with innocent wonder. Suddenly she was overcome by grief.

For months she'd been connected to the tiny person in her arms in every way possible and as she'd grown, they'd shared a subtle, persistent telepathic link. She was holding her, but she couldn't _feel_ her anymore. Her mind was too quiet. She _missed_ her.

Then the baby uttered a soft squeak, stretched her small mouth, and opened her dark little eyes and Nyota's heart melted into a pool of love that bordered on maniacal. They'd lost a fundamental connection that they would never get back, but they'd gained so much more. Her eyes drank in the miniature features of her daughter's face and Nyota suddenly understood she would be capable of murder to protect this wondrous creature.

" _Nyota_?"

She tore her eyes away and saw Spock standing at the foot of the bed. His posture was stiff and his eyes were trained on the blanket in her arms. He was still filthy from their swamp adventures but holding what looked like a clean uniform in his left hand.

"We have a little girl," she said, her voice cracking.

He bobbed his head and inched forward. Nyota's chin began to tremble as her eyes darted back and forth between the bundle in her arms and Spock's face. His features were smooth as always, but she could sense through their shared bond that he was struggling to subdue intense anxiety.

"Is she well?" Spock looked from the baby to Nurse Chapel.

"I've scanned every one of her molecules twice," Christine answered from behind him. "She came a little earlier than we thought she would, but she's just as she should be. Ten fingers, ten toes, and two Vulcan ears."

" _Come here_ ," Nyota pleaded, wondering why he was so far away even though his hip was actually touching the edge of the biobed.

"We're ready for you," called a voice. Dr. McCoy suddenly appeared from behind he curtain and smiled when he saw Spock.

"Congratulations," the doctor said, slapping him on the back as he approached the side of Nyota's bed.

Spock didn't flinch or express his usual mild annoyance at Dr. McCoy's candid familiarity. He simply said, "Thank you, doctor" without looking away from the baby.

"You ready to do this?" Dr. McCoy asked, turning to Nyota.

" _No_ ," she admitted, instinctively holding the baby a little tighter.

"It's only going to take a few minutes," he reassured her. "Spock can hold her while you're gone."

She looked at Spock and saw something unusual flash through his eyes. _Anticipation_? _Confusion_? Another intense cramp ripped through her abdomen, knocking the wind out of her. She gritted her teeth to keep from screaming but through it all, she could feel Spock's anxiety shooting through the roof.

She felt a pair of hands sliding under the blanket and then her baby was gone. She started to moan from the pain and could hear Dr. McCoy talking to Spock, but it sounded like their voices were coming from the other end of a tunnel. The biobed started to move and she realized she was being wheeled away. She craned her neck and yelped, " _Please take care of her_."

The last thing she remembered was the image of Spock standing rigidly, holding their daughter as if she might break, and staring at Nyota with passive fear in his eyes.

She wasn't exactly sure when she transitioned back from the point of unconsciousness, but the moment she opened her eyes, she saw a flicker of movement to her left. She tried to sit up but her body felt lethargic and foreign. She rolled her head on the firm pillow and saw Spock sitting next to her in a chair with their baby nestled into the crook of his left arm.

"Nyota?"

" _Spock_?" Her voice sounded harsh and unnatural. "How is she?"

"She is asleep," Spock replied.

"Can I see her?" Nyota whispered.

Spock slowly stood and leaned forward. Nyota's sluggish hand fumbled at the corners of the blanket to reveal their daughter's tiny fists clutched tightly to her little body. Nyota had no idea fingers could be so small. The powerful feelings of love returned, but were now quieter and more settled.

"She's so beautiful," she murmured.

"She resembles you."

"No, she looks more like you," Nyota insisted.

"I must disagree," he replied. "She has your dark eyes, your small nose, and your rich complexion."

"And _your_ everything else."

Spock slid his right hand from beneath the blanket and reached for Nyota's forefingers. She almost screamed at him to be careful not to drop her, but instantly realized just how irrational that would sound. His fingertips brushed the knuckle of her index finger and the pleasant sensation of ozh'esta calmed her nerves.

She studied his face. He was so patient and calm. Nyota's mind was still foggy and her emotions were still going haywire, but she felt more balanced than she had in months. She had been so mean, irritable, and unreasonable recently, but he'd endured it with his usual, logical patience. As the memories of the past few days flooded back into her consciousness, a completely different kind of love started to engulf her.

He had done so much to protect and provide for her down on the moon's surface. He'd comforted her and sacrificed so much of his own comfort. She closed her eyes and remembered Spock throwing his own body over her to protect her from the Orions right before they were beamed back aboard the _Enterprise_. She inhaled slowly to keep from crying. Why did _everything_ make her want to cry?

She felt the press of Spock's warm forehead on her own and nodded. She gave him a slow, long kiss and allowed herself to remain still, drinking in the moment. She heard a series of smacking and gurgling sounds and pulled away to see her baby, _their_ baby, awake and staring up at her parents in indifferent curiosity. The baby. The baby didn't have a name.

Spock knew her mind better than anyone and proved it just moments later. "She requires a name."

"I've come up with so many. I guess I thought I would just _know_ when I finally saw her, you know?"

"I have a proposal."

"Go ahead. She's your daughter too," Nyota laughed weakly.

"I had thought that we might call her Lyra."

She couldn't help the smile that forced its way onto her face. " _Lyra_ …"

"Do you approve?"

" _I think so_ ," she breathed, trying to contain her grin. "Is it for the constellation?"

"No," Spock replied. "Though I admit I drew my inspiration from the conversation we were engaged in just prior to our rescue. Lyra is a feminine form of the Vulcan name Lyras."

" _Lyras_ ," she repeated, rolling the word around on her tongue.

"The derived meaning from the ancient Golic Vulcan _lesh zherka hasu_ is 'a being who carries emotion.'"

"You were so insistent we should try to raise her according to Vulcan principles," Nyota scoffed. "Are you saying you want her to be more human now?"

"It is my hope that she follows the Vulcan way," Spock admitted. "But she is her own person and must be free to make the decision for herself when she is old enough to understand. Irrespective of her choice, she is more human than Vulcan. Whether she chooses to master her emotions or embrace them as humans do, I do not wish for her to deny the emotions of her mother and foremother that have forged her into the person she has become."

Everyone had warned her that having a baby was an emotional rollercoaster, but Spock's quiet mention of his mother induced a fresh batch of tears. Nyota had only met her once, but from the moment she knew she was pregnant she'd grieved that Amanda would never know her grandchild.

"Why do you cry?" Spock asked.

"Name a reason I _haven't_ cried in the past nine months," Nyota sniffed.

His eyebrow darted up to his hairline and she laughed through her tears. "Thank you for being so amazing. And understanding. And patient. And… _you_. Thank you for being _you_."

"It is illogical to imply I could be anything other than who I am."

She offered him a pained smile and looked at her new, unconventional, perfect little family. She'd thought about getting married several times over the years, but every time their relationship grew serious enough for her to risk broaching the subject, something went wrong. Spock had only just started to deal with Ambassador Spock's death when she found out she was pregnant and she didn't want to push marriage on him.

He'd mentioned about it several times, but it seemed like he only wanted to get married because it was what other people wanted them to do. She wanted him to want to marry her. Not that she could ever imagine herself with anyone else, but the sight of Lyra tucked into his arm only made her more certain. Spock was all she needed or wanted.

She thought of the ring she'd found in the side pocket of Spock's personal bag on their first day on the moon's surface. She'd agonized over its presence and purpose, but they'd had so many other problems that she'd never found an occasion to bring it up. She'd tucked it into the slim cargo pocket of her pants, but she'd had to shed them the moment she made it to sickbay since they'd been slimy and covered in amniotic fluid. What if someone had put them in a reclaimator without a second thought?

" _Oh no_ ," she gasped. "What happened to your pants? You know, the ones I was wearing?"

"One of the orderlies collected them."

"You have to get them back," she hissed.

The anxious tone of her voice made Lyra fidget in Spock's arms. "That is not possible. They have been taken to the reclaimator."

"You don't understand," she mumbled. "There was something- I had something in one of the pockets."

"I know," he replied. "I emptied the contents of the pockets before I surrendered them for disposal."

" _Oh_." She searched his face for some kind of explanation.

"The ring belonged to my foremother – my mother's mother," he explained. "I wished to give it to you. I understand it is customary in many human cultures to present one's mate with such a piece of jewelry during a proposal of marriage."

Nyota blinked.

"I am aware you have expressed your disapproval on the practice, however-"

" _Yes_ , Spock. The answer was always yes."

Spock's expression softened slightly. "Then why did you inform your mother you had no intention of marrying?"

"Because… I don't know. She has such strong opinions and seemed to think we didn't have a choice with a baby on the way. I didn't want you to feel pressured into marrying me just because we were having a baby. But… you _are_ holding our baby. I don't know if a ring or an official document really matters, but like it or not, we're stuck together and there's no one else I'd rather be stuck to."

Spock pulled the small jewelry box from his pocket and offered it to her.

"What are you _doing_ , Spock? You're supposed to get down on one knee!" called a raspy voice from behind him.

Nyota gaped at the wall of fabric and sighed at the sight of the captain's blond head poking between the curtains. She sneered and recoiled, both for his interruption and because the whites of his eyes were blood red. She vaguely remembered the bridge had depressurized and the bridge crew had barely been rescued in time.

"What are _you_ doing, Jim?" Bones hissed. "Give them some privacy and let them have their moment."

Spock looked from Jim to Nyota and she rolled her eyes. "I don't need you to get down on one knee or make some heartfelt speech. It would be nice if you'd make him go away though."

"Oh come on!" the captain begged. "I want this moment to be special for you."

"It _was_ until you ruined it."

"I can't believe you're getting _married_ ," Jim mused, pushing his way through the curtain. "That's so weird."

"Matrimony is not a novel idea," Spock replied.

Nyota closed her eyes and took a slow breath. She wasn't sure how she imagined getting a marriage proposal, but the captain's presence wasn't really _that_ shocking in the grand scheme of things.

"Well, now that this is a total disaster, maybe it would be a good time to come check on my patient," Dr. McCoy growled. "And congratulations, by the way."

"You guys had a baby and you didn't even think to come tell Uncle Jim?" Jim said in faux seriousness.

"You were unconscious," Spock countered. "I was in temporary command of the ship. Furthermore, you are not biologically related to this child."

"Don't bore me with the details, Spock," the captain drawled. "Let's see her."

"You in any pain?" the doctor asked, rolling his eyes at Jim and turning to face Nyota.

"Oh my God! She's a mini Spock," Jim laughed. "She's a _Spockette_!"

"That's what _I_ said," the doctor confessed, looking up from his tricorder.

"Why does everyone keep saying that?" Nyota seethed. "That's not her name! Her name is Lyra."

"It's a good name," the doctor agreed.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Let me hold my niece," Jim pleaded.

Spock gave him a pointed look.

" _God daughter_?" Jim tried.

Nyota glared at him and exchanged glances with Spock.

"Oh _come on_ ," Jim begged.

Nyota closed her eyes and grimaced, but allowed her sour expression to drift into a smile. The captain had defied Starfleet orders and altered course to join in the search and rescue mission to locate them the moment he'd heard the news, and without Jim Kirk's affinity for rule breaking, they would be dead. All three of them. No matter where they went, the _Enterprise_ was the closest thing to a home they had, and it felt good to be home.

Several hours later Dr. McCoy released them to their old quarters to rest and have some privacy to bond with their new addition. Virtually every member of the crew had peeked in to see Lyra, and though Nyota was happy to be safe among her Starfleet family, she was exhausted.

It had been seventy-four hours since they'd left the safety of the ship to travel to Risa and await the birth of their child. To Nyota, it felt like an entire lifetime had passed in a little more than three standard days.

Their next hours were full of all the wonderful – and not so wonderful – firsts of Lyra's life. As Nyota and Spock stumbled through feeding, burping, dressing, diapering, and soothing their daughter, she began to finally feel at ease. For most of her pregnancy she'd worried about caring for a baby, how she would juggle parenting with her career, and the kind of mother she would be. She'd argued with her mother, snapped at Spock, and agonized over every little thing she put in her body. She had no idea what the future would hold, but as she held her baby and twirled the ring around her finger, she didn't care to think about it. Life was good.

Spock improvised a cradle and installed it next to their bed, and though she didn't want to miss a second of her daughter's life, Nyota was quickly forced to give into fatigue. When a nightmare shocked her awake, she sat up and realized Lyra was gone.

Her heart caught in her chest and she was about to fly from the bed and begin a frantic search when she saw Spock gazing from the small portal into the vastness of space. Lyra was in his arms and he was talking to her in a quiet voice. She couldn't hear his words, but quickly realized they weren't meant for her.

The scene made her realize she'd been subconsciously worried about how Spock would adapt to fatherhood, but in that tender moment, she knew everything would be ok. Life was good, very good indeed.


End file.
